Alan O’Leary and Evelyn Kreutzer on the Importance of Writing on Video Essays

The Video Essay Podcast

There’s been a lot of debate about what the relationship should be between videographic criticism and writing. Some have wondered if video essays could function as stand-alone scholarship and break free from having to be framed by text-based explanations such as creator statements or peer reviews. But even if one acknowledges the role of writing in advancing videographic scholarship, another question emerges: which writing?

At this year's SCMS annual meeting in Boston, videographic scholars Evelyn Kreutzer and Alan O’Leary observed that several video essay presentations would cite texts from feminist film studies, genre film studies, global film studies, etc. But there wasn’t so much reference to existing writing about videographic scholarship. And it got them thinking, why aren’t videographic scholars giving more attention to writing about video essays? Haven’t there been examples of written scholarship that are worth referencing, in shaping our thinking about the form? Is it that they aren’t known well enough or established enough to be cited? And how can we start to get a better appreciation of the role of writing in video essay scholarship?

Evelyn and Alan recorded this conversation to get into these questions. Evelyn asked Alan to come up with two written essays that could be especially helpful in understanding videographic scholarship. Alan came up with about 6 or 7, which can be found in the show notes. From those they picked two to discuss in depth, leading to a rich and contentious conversation about what scholars want from video essays, and what role writing has in determining the answers to that question.

This episode is the sixth in an ongoing collaboration between The Video Essay Podcast and "The Video Essay: Memories, Ecologies, Bodies," a three-year research project on video essays led by Kevin B. Lee, Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema at USI University of Lugano, with Johannes Binotto and Evelyn Kreutzer, and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Written Essays Discussed

• Binotto, Johannes. In Lag of Knowledge. The Video Essay as Parapraxis. in: Bernd Herzogenrath (Ed.): Practical Aesthetics. London, New York: Bloomsbury 2021, S. 83-94.
• de Fren, Allison. ‘The Critical Supercut: A Scholarly Approach to a Fannish Practice’, The Cine-Files, Vol. 15, 2020, http://www.thecine-files.com/the-critical-supercut-a-scholarly-approach-to-a-fannish-practice/.
• Garwood, Ian. ‘From “Video Essay” to “Video Monograph”? Indy Vinyl as Academic Book’, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2020, https://necsus-ejms.org/from-video-essay-to-video-monograph-indy-vinyl-as-academic-book/.

Two articles by Susan Harewood:

1. ‘Seeking a Cure for Cinephilia’, The Cine-Files 15 (2020), http://www.thecine-files.com/seeking-a-cure-for-cinephilia/
2. ‘Canon and Catalyst in Video Essays’, ZFM 2023, https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/en/online/videography-blog/canon-and-catalyst-video-essays

Two articles by Miklós Kiss:

1. Videographic Criticism in the Classroom: Research Method and Communication Mode in Scholarly Practice. The Cine Files 15 (2020), http://www.thecine-files.com/videographic-criticism-in-the-classroom/.
2. What’s the Deal with the ‹Academic› in Videographic Criticism? ZFM (2024), https://zfmedienwissenschaft.de/en/online/whats-deal-academic-videographic-criticism.

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