We often discover new media fascinations in roundabout ways. In February of 2022, when filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki emailed me to ask if I’d seen Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s “Forensickness” (2022), I had only the vaguest sense of what had come to be called the “video essay.” I...
These days, most of us are torn between eco-terror of the future and a persistent hope that what seems inevitable can somehow be redirected (earlier eras have often seen the world coming to an end). It’s hardly surprising that inventive filmmakers are finding new ways...
Bill Morrison is known for his often-magical transformations of archival film in various states of decay into new works that speak to both past and present. Until the recent success of “Dawson City: Frozen Time” (2016), “Decasia” (2002), which was admitted to the...
"In any case, it is difficult to disprove the thesis that we have not yet succeeded in bringing the horrors of the air war to public attention through historical or literary accounts." — W. G. Sebald, "On the Natural History of Destruction" (1999), chapter 3 ...
The recent emergence of what has come to be called the video essay or the videographic essay or the audiovisual essay represents a new cinematic avant-garde. It offers implicit and explicit critiques of both commercial media and the logocentric literature of academic...
