Perhaps video essays are like pornography in that, as the saying goes, you know it when you see it. But what distinguishes a video essay from a short film and what are the ground rules for this ...

In Stilleben, Harun Farocki’s 1995 essay film (or film essay), we see a comparison between still-life paintings from the 17th-century and current commercial advertisements. The film aims to explore ...

Between 2014 and 2016, a YouTube channel called Every Frame a Painting posted 28 video essays critiquing movies and dissecting different aspects of filmmaking before it went silent. Taylor Ramos and ...

"Understood?" There's a new video essay series + short film premiering soon that you might want to take a look at - unveiling soon up in Canada. The Second is the short film that is part of a new ...

An exploration of the science, history and ethics of organ donation in the context of the filmmaker's kidney donation. For the record, Lane thought about donating a kidney long before she thought of ...

It is a little disconcerting, in the new documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, premiering on HBO on December 12, to hear Robin Gibb pronounce the band’s name with the emphasis on ...

It’s very easy to misread the title of Victor Kossakovsky’s latest documentary as “Architection,” since it is, in some ways, a detective story about the world we live in, albeit one in which it is ...

Polygon’s latest series, The Masterpieces of Streaming, looks at the new batch of classics that have emerged from an evolving era of entertainment. Like every medium before it, “video essays” on ...

An underground economy built around the Kenyans ghost-writing essays for more privileged college students is brought into the light in Eloïse King’s “The Shadow Scholars,” a documentary executive ...

As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. Already a member? Sign in ...