ARTS 105: video essay
Prof. sarah rara

This introductory studio course engages the genre of video essay. Situated at the intersection of video art and documentary film practices, video essay explores the interval between politics and aesthetics, fiction and non-fiction, in an attempt to create a personal language with which to describe the tension between social, political, and personal realities. Students gain hands-on video production experience with editing, cinematography, and sound design grounded in the editorial and rhetorical strategies of video essay which articulate a language of relationships: between sound and image, artist and subject, fact and feeling, memory and language. Self-referential and reflexive, video essay operates in a space of inquiry between poetry, philosophy, autobiography, politics, and cultural studies. The course examines how video essay moves across disciplines, reflecting ethical and aesthetic strategies developed within documentary film, journalism, auto-ethnography, auto-fiction, media theory, performance, and the history of video art itself, in pursuit of a renewed relationship to processes of observation, memory, and recognition. Assignments emphasize the creation and presentation of an original body of video work for critique, alongside research, writing, and discussion of theoretical texts and artworks, including the work of Chris Marker, Hito Steyerl, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Harun Farocki, Agnès Varda, among others.

'Maloulou'

Germanie Louis

Spring 2021
RT 5:07, HD 1080P Video, color, sound

Maloulou is a short film that explores Haitian girlhood and agency. Inspired by Marie Lily Cerat’s short story of the same name, I ask, “Are Haitian girls Allowed to Dream?”

CW: mention of sexual abuse

'Which One?'
Germanie Louis

Spring 2021
RT 4:16, HD 1080P Video, color, sound

“Which One?” addresses the outcome of my mother’s immigration story which she embarked upon in search of a ‘better life’, and this story is put into conversation with Evelyne Trouillot’s short story “Which One?”

'No Place Like Home'

Sydney Pope

Spring 2021
RT 2:16, HD 1080P video, color, sound

This video honors memory, grief, and how certain audio and visual landscapes connect us to those we love most

'Midwood'

Kimberlean Donis

Spring 2021

RT 3:22, HD video, color, sound

What does love mean to an objectified body? How does Black marriage survive within the nuclear family? How can sex be beyond one’s Blackness? Using found footage and the collected words of Black writers, Midwood dissects these questions and leaves viewers with virtually no answer in return.

'VAT Title 7 Article 3'

Kohen Rahman

Spring 2021
RT 1:01, HD 1080P Video

VAT Title 7 Article 3 is a short film that disregards the New York City laws put in place against speeding and celebrates the adrenaline that comes from driving.

'Paternal is Eternal Pt. I'

Calen Geiser-Cseh

Spring 2021
RT 4:00, HD video, color, sound

Paternal is Eternal Pt. I is a tender video essay about family and addiction.

'Paternal is Eternal Pt.II'

Calen Geiser-Cseh,

Spring 2021
RT 5:49, HD video, color, sound

Paternal is Eternal Pt.II investigates a father-daughter relationship in its associations with place, memory, and the loss of both.

CW: brief mention of suicide

'Ain’t'
Hope Wiley

Spring 2021
RT 1:41, HD 1080p Video, color, sound

Ain’t is a cathartic video for me in which I put image and sound to the experience of being immersed in academic language as someone from a working-class family with a vocabulary of its own.