Video Essays

As the student editors and I produced issue 6 of The Cine-Files and studied the subtleties of a variety of film performances, we often noted the difficulty involved in translating an actor’s performance into written analysis.   Our discussions often turned to the burgeoning genre of the video essay.  We provide links here to several examples of video essays  that, for us, provocatively employ the videographic camera-stylo to illuminate nuances of the performative gesture.  We follow those links with a few of our own experiments from this quarter’s graduate seminar on film performance.  — Tracy Cox-Stanton, Editor

Laura Mulvey’s video analysis of gesture in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, published in [in]Transition, March 2014

Thomas Elsaesser’s “Bergman’s Bodies:  Touch and Skin,” published in [in]Transition, March 2014

Catherine Grant and Andrew Klevan’s collaboration “Magnifying Mirror,” published on Film Studies for Free

Ian Magor’s “Psychoface”

Video Essays by Student Editors, The Cine-Files, Spring 2014:

“Performing Gender in Bigger Than Life” by Eugenia Hannon, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2014

“The Art of the Interview” by Buckle Nagle, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2014

“Andy Griffith:  Performing the Southern Man” by Amanda Stone, Savannah College of Art and Design, 2014 (coming soon!)