Monday 11 April 2011

Audiovisualcy: Videographic Film Studies

Logo for Audiovisualcy at Vimeo

At the weekend, Film Studies For Free's author dreamt of a beautiful online archive, gathering together works in the burgeoning scholarly and critical genre of video essays about films and moving image studies. 

A little feverish curatorial and neologistical work later, the marvellous dream became a reality.  Audiovisualcy is that reality.

Audiovisualcy is a group page at Vimeo which gathers together in one handy and easy to find place, the numerous video essays about films, film studies and film theory already posted at that video hosting site by individual users. Twenty-eight videos [more than seventy, as of April 12], on all manner of films, are available for your perusal so far. More will be added as they are discovered or created.

If you join the group, you will automatically receive updates as new videos are posted, but you can also follow @AUDIOVISUALCY and get those at Twitter, too. If you know of any other relevant video essays at Vimeo or ones hosted on other sites, you can let the group know about them by emailing us here, and, if appropriate, these will be added and publicised.

If you are curious about the possibilities for Film Studies or for film criticism offered by this format, do please check out the links to the work of some of more prolific, and (beginning with Matt Zoller Seitz) talented, essayists, below.


Catherine Grant: 
Matt Zoller Seitz:
Kevin B. Lee:
Steven Santos:
Jim Emerson:
Kartina Richardson:
Jason Bellamy:
Ben Sampson:
Paul Malcolm:
Eric Faden:
Also see the following online journals which have regularly published video essays:

1 comment:

Pacze Moj said...

Thanks for collecting and sharing these. I was aware of Kevin Lee's videos (and hosting problems) but not the others.

For some reason, I still think of "video criticism" as solely existing on TV (and, since there's nothing resembling that on TV...)

A few years ago I spent some time reading through old film-themed journals and I remember critics bemoaning that they couldn't show clips from films but had to describe them. There was even on article that drooled over any possible future possibility of having criticism come with appropriate video.

Now we have the technology and ability and this type of thing should really be more widespread. I mean, people film conferences and interviews (some of which without any film clips, as if I need to hear, as opposed to just hear, ten people sitting behind a shabby-looking table) but going directly to video seems more taboo.

I suppose there are legal issues as fair use is limited.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

Thanks again for the effort and links and I hope it inspires more of the same!

:)