The Video Essay Podcast

Today's episode features a conversation recorded live in May at The King's Festival of Artificial Intelligence in London. The event featured as the launch of Cinema and Machine Vision: Artificial Intelligence, Aesthetics and Spectatorship, a new book from Edinburgh University Press by Daniel Chávez Heras, who is a lecturer in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London.

Before a live audience, Daniel and Will chat about the themes and topics covered in the book, the intersections of AI and Film Studies, and answer audience questions. To learn more about Daniel and his work, click here.

Daniel has also agreed to give away two copies of the book to listeners! Learn more here.

From movies to television, YouTube to TikTok, it’s a big world of audiovisual media out there. How many videographic works have tried to take them all in? A new installation work has tried to do just that. The Extended Play is a collaboration between artists Anina Müller and Jennifer Merlyn Scherler, which was exhibited at the Austellungsraum Klingental in Basel. The piece consists of four videos, or tracks, that function like a musical EP. Collectively they explore how moving images influence the ways humans inhabit their bodies, an extended play if you will.

Track 1: The Portal borrows from stereotyped cinematic, dreamy imagery to explore the moment of exiting the cinema in a daze, where on- and off-screen worlds bleed into each other.

In Track 2: The Main Character, two characters enter a medieval fantasy world cosplay inspired by Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, music videos and TikTok.

Track 3: crying selfies <3 reflects on the selfies people, especially young femmes, take when they cry – as a refusal to participate in the capitalist, neo-liberal “girlboss” mindset. 

Track 4: No Pose No Rose is a YouTube style talk show on bodybuilding, exploring its exaggerated presentations of gender and an image-based understanding of the self.

As part of the exhibition, the artists invited Kevin B. Lee and Johannes Binotto, co-leaders of the SNSF project “The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies” to share their reflections on the themes of their work in a joint conversation. They talk about their own relationship to different modes of media experience, from movies to social media, and the effects of these experiences on their own sense of embodiment.

The Extended Play was supported by the Fachausschuss Film und Medienkunst BS/BL.

Follow the show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠free newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Music by Ketsa.

Today's episode is the first in a series of conversations on videos created as part of the project, Doing Women’s (Global) (Horror) Film History (DWGHFH), a year-long video essay mentoring and training program that culminated in a videographic special issue of MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture.  Led by Alison Peirse, DWGHFH features the work of thirty contributors on "women horror filmmakers in non-anglophone countries, with a particular focus on filmmakers from the Global Majority."

This episode features a conversation with Krista Calvo, the creator of "Dos Hermanas: Uncanny Femininity, Grief & Childhood in Carillo's Animations," and Colleen Laird, creator of "Kūki."

Will DiGravio hosted, edited and produced this episode. Emily Su Bin Ko is the show's associate producer. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Music by Ketsa⁠⁠⁠⁠ and _HEAVYLEG.

Today's episode is the fourth in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and "The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies," a three-year research project on video essays led by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

In this episode, Kevin talks with project members Libertad Gills, Marine de Dardel, and Silvia Cipelletti about the experience of making video essays on the work of Alice Diop, the featured filmmaker at this year's L'immagine e la parola, the spring edition of the Locarno Film Festival. The event for the group to produce original video essays on Diop's films. In this conversation, the group discusses how they approached the films for their video essays, knowing that they would be screened with Alice Diop in the audience. You can learn more about the project on their Instagram page.

Follow the show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get the ⁠⁠⁠⁠free newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Music by Ketsa.

Today's episode features a conversation with filmmaker Christopher Jason Bell, who joins the show to discuss Miss Me Yet, his ten-part found footage series on the presidency of George W. Bush and rehabilitation of Bush's image in recent years. The series is available to stream for free via Means TV.

Also, check out an essay on Miss Me Yet written by Will in the latest issue of Millennium Film Journal.

Support the podcast on ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠. Follow the show on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠. Get the ⁠⁠⁠free newsletter⁠⁠⁠. Subscribe on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠.

Will DiGravio hosted, edited and produced this episode. Emily Su Bin Ko is the show's associate producer. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Music by Ketsa⁠⁠⁠⁠: "Live It," "Anvil," and "Refraining."

Today's episode is the third in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and "The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies," a three-year research project on video essays led by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation

Today's episode features a conversation with Alison Peirse, a horror film scholar and professor at the University of Leeds. Alison led the project Doing Women’s (Global) (Horror) Film History (DWGHFH), a year-long video essay mentoring and training program that culminated in a videographic special issue of MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture. DWGHFH features the work of thirty contributors working on "women horror filmmakers in non-anglophone countries, with a particular focus on filmmakers from the Global Majority." Alison and Will discuss the origins of the project, the contributors and mentors who worked on DWGHFH, how the video essays exist into existing scholarship on women horror filmmakers, and much more. 

Support the podcast on ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠. Follow the show on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠. Get the ⁠⁠⁠free newsletter⁠⁠⁠. Subscribe on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠.

Today's episode is the second in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and "The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies," a three-year research project on video essays led by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation

In this conversation, Kevin talks with Evelyn about her picks for the 2023 survey of the year's best video essays by Sight & Sound magazine. Evelyn's selections serve as an entry point for the two to discuss the broader themes of their research project.

Follow the show on ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠⁠website⁠⁠. Get the ⁠⁠free newsletter⁠⁠.

Will DiGravio hosted and produced this episode. Editing by Kevin B. Lee and Will DiGravio. Emily Su Bin Ko is the show's associate producer. ⁠⁠Music by Ketsa.

On today's episode, Will talks with filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho about his new film, Pictures of Ghosts. Set in the director's home city of Recife, in the Pernambuco state of Brazil, the film is a self-described "multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking." Kleber talks about the film's origins, the art of voiceover narration, treating his own films as archival images, and the unique ways that cinema is able to tell stories of ghosts. Learn more about the film and when it might be screening near you, here.

Support the podcast on ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠. Follow the show on ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠⁠website⁠⁠. Get the ⁠⁠free newsletter⁠⁠. Subscribe on ⁠YouTube⁠.

Will DiGravio hosted, edited and produced this episode. Emily Su Bin Ko is the show's associate producer. ⁠⁠Music by Ketsa⁠⁠: "Live It," "Anvil," and "Refraining."

Today's episode centers on Sight & Sound magazine's new list, "The Best Video Essays of 2023." In a conversation moderated by Kevin B. Lee, the curators of this year's list, Irina Trocan, Queline Meadows, and Will Webb, discuss the results of the poll, their curatorial strategies, and offer general thoughts on the video essay landscape in 2023.

This episode is the first in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and Kevin B. Lee, who, in his role as the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, is leading a three-year research project on video essays with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Read Kevin's columns for Sight & Sound here.

Support the podcast on ⁠Patreon⁠. Follow the show on ⁠Twitter⁠. Learn more at the pod's ⁠website⁠. Get the ⁠free newsletter⁠.

Will DiGravio hosted and produced this episode. Editing by Kevin B. Lee and Will DiGravio. Emily Su Bin Ko is the show's associate producer. ⁠Music by Ketsa⁠: "Live It," "Anvil," and "Refraining."