Expanded Screens: The Video Essay

“The video essay or the videographic essay or the audiovisual essay represents a new cinematic avant-garde.” Thus wrote Scott MacDonald in an influential 2022 article, using three different terms to describe films and videos that employ existing media for critical purposes. Each term signals a separate way of combining artistic experimentation, academic research, and essayistic reflection into a singular expression. This screening series presents a selection of video essays from across the 21st century that offer a spectrum of the medium’s possibilities, featuring authors who work in a self-defined space somewhere between film studies and experimental filmmaking.

Programmed by Will DiGravio, John Gibbs, Evelyn Kreutzer, Kevin B. Lee, and Mara Oliva