Filmscalpel

Illustration of jam on toast and a traffic jam in the background. Text reads: Join the second annual Video Jam hosted by The Essay Library, January 16-18, 2026. Participants will have 48 hours to create a video essay inspired by a given prompt. Learn more and join at theessaylibrary.com.

🚨 THE VIDEO JAM IS BACK! 🚨

📅 January 16–18, 2026

To celebrate five years of The Essay Library, we'll be coming together once again to create video essays in 48 hours.

Learn more + join: theessaylibrary.com#jam

Call for Applications!
Ways of Undoing invites videographic makers, scholars, and artists to apply to one of three intensive, week-long residential workshops (St Andrews 2026 | Vancouver 2027 | Tokyo 2028).
Funded accommodation & board provided.
Deadline: Feb 1, 2026
waysofdoing.com/ways-of-undo...

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“We can now steal all your creative work. And share it with other thieves”. WeTransfer’s new terms of service are as brazen as they are despicable.

I just deleted my professional account.

I Know What You’ll Do This Summer.

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie.

Seventeen

Hollywood does Sherwood: Reinforced Aesthetics of my Robin Hoods Submission for Remakes and Memories (part of the Hollywood Memories project https://hollywood-memories.com/). Hollywood does Sherwood begins as an exploration…

How does Kevin Costner's 1991 Robin Hood remember Disney's 1973 version of the outlaw? How does that one, in turn, remember Errol Flynn's 1938 incarnation? Why is Ridley Scott's 2010 take on the character forgettable?
@jemsaunders1.bsky.social jogs her memory in this nostalgia-inducing video essay.

Application deadline is March 28 - please share with your students and colleagues who might be interested!

A shot of James Stewart in a wheelchair, taken from REAR WINDOW, featuring the title MALE GAZING.

MALE GAZING is a radical reworking of REAR WINDOW, an audiovisual thought experiment and a piece of performative film criticism. What disappears when movies only look at the world through male eyes?

CAPS EXPerimental | Capricorn Film Festival 2025 Screening throughout the festival, a series of short form videos projects from international, Australian and Central Queensland artists and filmmakers which fit the narrative of experimental and visua...

Friends Down Under: my video essay / short film MALE GAZING is playing at the ninth edition of the CAPRICORN FILM FESTIVAL in Yeppoon, Australia.
This Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th January it is part of CAPS EXPERIMENTAL, a short form video art selection.
More here: www.capricornfilmfestival.org

Screenshot from video essay GETTI MAGES showing a photo collage of women seen on their backs, unrecognizable, looking out a rainy window.

GETTY ABORTIONS explores Getty's stock image databases and finds that the photos used to illustrate abortion are very stereotypical. Franzis Kabisch uses her personal story to challenge the anonymity of those images.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024
More here:
www.filmscalpel.com/getty-aborti...

Makeover Movie A pop culture essay film on the makeover movies we grew up loving—and all the ways they taught us that we needed to fix ourselves. Featuring clips from nearly…

MAKEOVER MOVIE by Sue Ding compiles a long list of objections to the trope of the makeover montage and substantiates them with an impressive array of film excerpts. She also enlisted six childhood friends to give a running commentary on her video essay - a great idea.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024

Screenshot from a heimatfilm showing a couple sitting in a mountain landscape, wearing traditional German clothing.

HEIMATFILM fashions excerpts from 50 different films into a hilarious supercut. Marion Kellmann deftly combines recurring situations and motifs, and boils the German genre down to its narrative, thematic and iconographic essence.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024
More here:
www.filmscalpel.com/heimatfilm/

Screenshot from GTA5 Mod "Meanwhile in Los Santos" showing an NPC standing still in a forlorn gas station.

MEANWHILE IN LOS SANTOS (DISSOCIATION NATION) is a mod for Grand Theft Auto V that shifts the focus to NPCs (non-player characters, the extras of the gaming world). Their interior monologues are a critique of GTA’s design.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024
More here:
www.filmscalpel.com/meanwhile-in...

Light Hands This video essay is published in Movie: a Journal of Film Criticism, 11, where you can read more about it: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/film/movie/contents/ford_light_hands._movie_issue11.pdf

LIGHT HANDS is an excellent example of how to revitalise archival footage in a video essay. Historian Lily Ford delves into the Imperial War Museum’s collection of footage of women building airplanes during WWI. She engages with it in a creative and speculative manner.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024

The Red God The foxes come and go, cohabitants of my backyard in Belfast. In this short essay film I explore how I might honour them as my Māori forebears honour their native…

THE RED GOD strings together footage of foxes recorded by a wildlife camera. Christine Rogers connects her videographic research to her Māori ancestry and her personal history, to decolonisation and the camera as imperial tool, to speciesism and the human/nonhuman divide.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024

Maria Zandvliet performing her live interpretation and analysis of The Sound of Music, using multiple projection screens.

DE SONT OF MJOEZIK is a live performance by Maria Zandvliet that translates videographic strategies to the stage. It turns the video essay into a fully embodied form of research. The result is an exhilarating study of fandom.
#favoritevideoessaysof2024

More here:
www.filmscalpel.com/de-sont-of-m...

Interior shot of the apartment from Billy Wilder's The Apartment.

Can't make it to the MoMI in NY? Here's my contribution to their video essay screening series.
In THE APARTMENT I digitally removed all characters from Billy Wilder's classic. What remains of that film’s essence when it is reduced to its locale?
See for yourself: www.filmscalpel.com/the-apartment/

Expanded Screens Program 2: Remixing New York – Museum of the Moving Image This program presents New York City as it’s featured in documentary and experimental remix films. The artists represented in this screening pick up and disturb iconic TV clips, touristic images, video...

Expanded Screens: The Video Essay comprises a total of 32 audiovisual essays, grouped into four thematic screenings.
It's a diverse and inspired program, curated and compiled by @willdigravio.bsky.social, John Gibbs, Kevin B. Lee, @maraoliva.bsky.social and @evelynkreutzer.bsky.social.

Expanded Screens: The Video Essay – Museum of the Moving Image 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 somewher...

Here's a great way to start 2025. The Museum of the Moving Image in New York is devoting a screening series to the video essay. From January 3 to 5, they will present four different programs.
My video essay THE APARTMENT is part of the second program (scheduled for Jan 4), called REMIXING NEW YORK.

Grainy photo of Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky

On this day in 1986, Andrei Tarkovsky left us. He had spent only 54 years with us, but he sculpted that time into seven immortal feature films. Celebrate his legacy with this selection of ten video essays: filmscalpel.com/andrei-tarko...

The best video essays of 2024 From film festivals to TikTok, our annual poll showcases 183 unique video essays nominated by 47 international voters.

Sight and Sound has published its annual poll of the year's most notable video essays.
@queline.bsky.social , @willwebbful.bsky.social, and @cydniiwilde.bsky.social tallied a total of 183 videos. Better start now if you plan to watch them all before the year ends. Or skip Christmas dinner.

Jean-Luc Godard

On this day in 1930, Jean-Luc Godard was born. He was both film icon and iconoclast, movie rebel and royalty. Defining this chameleonic French provocateur is hard, but these ten video essays give it a go, focusing on different aspects of his output: www.filmscalpel.com/godard

Suffering In Rhythm: The 'Haunting Melody' in Film Noir ‘Suffering In Rhythm’ examines the recurrence of the trope of the ‘haunting melody’ in film noir. It is conceived as a poetic and instructional…

SUFFERING IN RHYTHM by Padraic Killeen (published in @intransition.bsky.social) tracks down examples of the ‘haunting melody’ trope that is common in film noir. The Coens' THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE makes an appearance in this insightful video essay.

Souls at Hazard: The Coens and Their Cops in Fargo and No Country for Old Men A video essay that illustrates how the films parallel and diverge from each other in the portrayals of their law(wo)men. It certainly doesn't take a genius…

The Coens have tried their hand at wildly different genres, yet their filmography is very consistent. There's their distinctive visual style, but there are thematic constants as well. In this video essay, @timklobuchar.bsky.social charts the parallels between Fargo and No Country For Old Men.

The Coen Brothers: Waltz on the Road - Orignal Video Essay Original Video Essay to explore the narrative in the Coen Brothers Style. The importance of the road in all their filmography let them explore the different emotions…

Go on the road with the Coen Brothers. This well-edited and thorough supercut by Enrique Perales explores the car and the road in the Coens' moviemaking, and in doing so brings out the particular brand of Americana that helps define their films.

Joel & Ethan Coen - Shot | Reverse Shot How do you film a conversation? Most likely, you’re going to block the actors, set up the camera, and do shot/reverse shot. But where do you put the camera?…

The shot/reverse shot is a basic staple of film language. But the Coen brothers put their own spin on it. This video essay by Every Frame a Painting dissects just what makes their shot/reverse shot distinctive.

The Filmmaker's Voice: Joel & Ethan Coen Twitter: https://twitter.com/alamofilmguy Take a pause for the Coen Brothers. The filmmaking duo, whose credits include “Fargo” and “No Country…

One of the trademarks of the Joel and Ethan Coen's films is their use of pauses, this video essay by @alamofilmguy.bsky.social shows. Those pauses are awkward or comical, witty or weird, suspenseful or just quirky. But always idiosyncratic.

Recut Frères Coen - Blow Up - ARTE YouTube video by Blow Up, l'actualité du cinéma (ou presque) - ARTE

Over a dozen iconic characters from the Coen bros' films coexist in this imaginative mash-up conceived by Luc Lagier for @artefr.bsky.social.

A black and white photograph of Joel and Ethan Coen and the on-screen text "Coen Brothers Video Essay Dossier".

On November 29, 1954, Joel Coen was born. His brother Ethan would join him three years later. Celebrate their combined creative output with this selection of video essays.
🧵

(Big fan? There are even more on www.filmscalpel.com/coen-brothers/)