Video Essays and Global Cinema

This hands-on workshop immerses students in the craft practice of academic video essaying through your own videographic analyses of global films. Our labs will equip you with the basic skills required to begin your own video criticism. Video essays are an emergent field in film and media studies: “The full range of digital technologies now enables film and media scholars to write using the very materials that constitute their objects of study: moving images and sounds” (http://mediacommons.org/intransition/about). We will learn how to write videographically by using clips from movies as interpretive evidence for our analyses of the movies we watch.

The focus of this year’s video essay workshop is on how Latin American movies re-present and remember the dictatorships of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Films will include: Machuca (Andres Wood, Chile, 2004); No (Pablo Larraín, Chile, 2012); A 12 Year Night (Alvaro Brechner, Uruguay, 2018); Breadcrumbs (Manane Rodriguez, Uruguay, 2016);  Argentina, 1985 (Santiago Mitre, Argentina, 2022), The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, 2008); and I’m Still Here (Walter Salles, Brazil, 2024). (How) are Latin American movies different from their Hollywood counterparts and why? Do Latin American (historical) movies share genre conventions across countries? How do we re-present the Latin American film styles and conventions videographically?

Class time will rotate among three activities: 1) Feature Film Screenings; 2) Seminar Discussions; and 3) Videographic Workshops. We will practice a variety of formal video editing and essaying exercises on the movies we watch: 1) a videographic PechaKucha; 2) an unscripted voiceover; 3) a multiscreen composition; 4) a videographic epigraph; and 5) A video adaptation of a course article or reading. After we collectively experiment videographically, students will create your own essays individually or in groups.