Jan Švankmajer’s Food — The Balance Of Surreal Humour And Morbid Shocks
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Food (which you can stream here first) is a great place to start for those looking for an appetizer of Jan Svankmajer’s work. And this video essay does a fantastic job of highlighting how the surreal 1993 short film rebels against that most basic of activities: eating.
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This video essay is by You Have Been Watching Films, a channel produced by United Kingdom-based writer Oliver Bagshaw. They provide video essays on an assortment of movies including examples from cult, documentary, experimental, and classic strains of cinema history. You can subscribe to their YouTube channel here. And you can follow them on Twitter here.
An Exhaustive History of Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings
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This video essay may be “exhaustive,” but when it comes to untangling Ralph Bakshi‘s messy, nostalgic, and wildly ambitious adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Bakshi’s film has a well-deserved reputation for being a buck wild, mixed media mishmash. However, specifics about its creation, strengths, and weaknesses are less discussed. So in the interest of righting that wrong, here is a video essay that gives Bakshi’s adaptation its due.
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This video essay is by Dan Olson. His channel, Folding Ideas, tackles narrative theory and the mechanisms of storytelling in all its forms. You can follow Olson on Twitter here. And you can subscribe to Folding Ideas on YouTube here.
The Other Side of Digital Cinema: Tangerine and Digital Realism
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I’ll admit that I’m definitely one of those people with a bias towards film being the better way to capture “reality.” And I’m grateful for the different perspective that is offered by this 2021 video essay, which uses Sean Baker‘s Tangerine as an example of digital cinema’s capacity for showing the world as it is.
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This video essay is by Jordan Schonig, who holds a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago. They are a Film Studies lecturer and make video essays on, what else, film. You can subscribe to Schonig on YouTube here. And you can follow them on Twitter here.
Wes Anderson, Class, and Aesthetic: The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox
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Looking at two Wes Anderson movies, The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox, this video essay highlights a crucial distinction in how the filmmaker uses his distinct twee aesthetic for class commentary. If you’ve ever wondered what purpose Wes Anderson’s aesthetic plays both in his individual works or within his wider filmography, this video essay is a great place to start.
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This video is by Maggie Mae Fish, a Los Angeles-based comedian, actress, and culture critic who releases short films and video essays on her YouTube account. Fish has been featured on College Humor, Screen Junkies, and JASH. She was also a former lead actor and writer at Cracked.com. You can follow Fish on Twitter here.
Why Don’t the Oscars Take Horror Movies Seriously?
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If you’ve ever wondered why the Academy very (very) rarely nominates horror movies for Best Picture, what the actual numbers are on their bias, or what their dislike of the genre means for their larger artistic tastes, this is the video essay for you!
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This video comes courtesy of the fine folks at Little White Lies, a film-obsessed magazine based in the United Kingdom. Leigh Singer wrote and edited this video, and Adam Woodward produced it. You can follow Little White Lies on Twitter here. And you can check out their official website here. You can subscribe to their YouTube account here.
Related Topics: 2021 Rewind, The Queue
