Video-essays

Met slechts twee films op zijn naam wordt Kantemir Balagov nu al gezien als de grote hoop voor de Russische cinema. Zijn films Tesnota en Beanpole zijn complexe, gelaagde werken waarin grote maatschappelijke onderwerpen worden verwerkt in zeer individuele verhalen. In een nieuw video-essay, gemaakt voor het Critics’ Choice-programma op het afgelopen IFFR, onderzoekt Joost Broeren-Huitenga op een andere manier lagen van Balagovs eigen stellingen en invloeden, als een alternatieve introductie op Beanpole.

Parasite is one of the most detailed, intricately crafted films of 2019. In this video essay I examine how Bong Joon-Ho uses set design and visual language to reveal the film's deeper themes and ideas.

Video-essay: meerijden met Cliff Booth uit Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood door het Los Angeles van 1969.

Can movement tell a story? Sure, if you’re as gifted as Akira Kurosawa. More than any other filmmaker, he had an innate understanding of movement and how to capture it onscreen. Join me today in studying the master, possibly the greatest composer of motion in film history.

An exploration of the cinematic infusion of empty spaces with the ghosts of memory, using the films of Ozu, Ford, Akerman, and more.

Read more about this video essay by Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas on MUBI's Notebook:

https://mubi.io/39i0x8d

Who is the real monster in the story of Frankenstein? MoMA Film curator Anne Morra examines the roles of the doctor and the creature in cinema history with a focus on the Hammer Horror series.

For more on Frankenstein, check out our User's Guide to Frankenstein

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Eye-programmeur Anna Abrahams kiest als thuiskijktip haar favoriete film Un chien andalou (1928) van Luis Buñuel en Salvador Dalí.

‘Juist de creatieve, mild anarchistische manier van denken van deze kunstenaars kan helpen nieuwe manieren te vinden om de huidige crisis tegemoet te treden’, stelt Abrahams. ‘En dat geldt op allerlei gebieden: medisch, politiek en economisch; maar ook cultureel kunnen we niet doorgaan zoals we gewend zijn.

’Het gestructureerde – want precies gemonteerde - anarchisme van Un chien andalou toont de kracht van fantasie en de nieuwe wegen die de geest kan inslaan als de reservoirs van het onbewuste worden aangesproken.

David Cairns takes a close look at the carefully calibrated minimalism of Hal Ashby’s masterful satire.

Voor de release van Pablo Larraín's nieuwe film Ema maakte film- en muziekcriticus Hugo Emmerzal dit video-essay.

When Jean Epstein, Raúl Ruiz, and other filmmakers explored the surge of waves, storms, and the way they determine the action of their characters, it became clear that the secret forces of the sea and cinema are comparable, mysterious, and ultimately hypnotic.

Martin Scorsese’s 2019 comment that Marvel movies were not cinema stirred controversy. This playfully metaphorical video essay takes a multi-faceted approach to Scorsese appreciation, the irrefutable impact on moviegoers caused by streaming services, and the questionable future of cinema itself.

"Surviving Memories" by Alessandro Luchetti and Manuela Lazic

This video essay explores how Maria Saakyan’s The Lighthouse (Mayak), a film more about the effect of war on people than about war itself, paints the push and pull between the comfort of memories and the reality of present danger as a never ending, circling voyage.

"The Rising of the Moon" by James Slaymaker

The Rising of the Moon is an audio-visual exploration of the Irish struggle for independence as it has been mediated through cinematic images. Adopting a method of archaeological montage inspired by the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Harun Farocki, and Chris Marker, it locates rhymes and echoes between audio-visual material accumulated from over a century of Irish filmmaking. Issues of martyrdom, emigration, rural dispossession, social alienation, cultural memory, and economic inequality, rise to the forefront of this excavation as it assembles fragmentary citations into intricate constellations of sound and image. The cinematic representation of four significant periods in the history of Irish independence are reflected upon in particular: the rebellion of 1798, the 1916 Easter Rising, the war of independence, and the Northern Irish Troubles. By locating these associations, The Rising of the Moon constructs a non-linear and interstitial form of historical perception wherein struggles from various eras parallel one another and past events interpenetrate with the present moment. The associative interweaving of audio-visual material launches an investigation into the socio-political development of Ireland, and, reflexively, into the potential for cinema to function as a tool for performing historical thought.

Voor hun serie The Thinking Machine creëren filmcritici Adrian Martin en Cristina Álvarez López iedere maand een nieuw video-essay voor de Filmkrant.

Of ze nu het gangsterliefje speelde in Fritz Langs The Big Heat (1953) of Ado Annie, ‘the girl who can’t say no‘ in de musical Oklahoma! (1955), actrice Gloria Grahame (1923-1981) was onlosmakelijk verbonden aan seks op het scherm. Of tenminste, de belofte, verwachting, opbouw, de spanning van wat gaat komen – het naderen van seks. Hollywood had in de jaren vijftig vele manieren om seks te benaderen (zonder het te tonen), en Grahame was (met Robert Mitchum en Robert Ryan) medeplichtig aan twee van de meest verbluffende voorbeelden, in Stanley Kramers weinig bekende Not as a Stranger (1955) en Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). “Voor deze ene keer…”

"Days Passed: Lee Kang-Sheng Through the Eyes of Tsai Ming-Liang" by Michelle Cho

A video essay exploring the fragile passage of time through the shifting textures of Lee Kang-Sheng's face in the films of Tsai Ming-Liang.

The Basement is the classic location for a horror movie's terrifying climax. But why? Let's take a look at what makes a basement scary, and see how it actually goes much, much deeper.

To learn more, I highly recommend reading Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

Nu 2020 eindelijk achter ons ligt, kunnen we terugkijken op een jaar dat velen tot wanhoop dreef. Inclusief de personages van een hele rits films die afgelopen jaar in Nederland uitkwamen, toont een nieuw video-essay.

Sophie Park laat in dit video-essay zien hoe filmmaker Sarah Polley (Away from Her, 2006; Stories We Tell, 2012) herinneringen onderzoekt in haar films.

Filmmaker Thomas Flight laat in dit video-essay zien hoe Christopher Nolan het show-don’t-tell-principe veronachtzaamd in Tenet (2020).

Read the introduction to this video essay on MUBI's Notebook: Video Essay: Orders of Time and Motion - The shots of "Sátántangó" on Notebook | MUBI

Video essay by Kevin B. Lee.

"Orders of Time and Motion - The Shots of Sátántangó" by Kevin B. Lee

A new video essay explores the images on screen in Bela Tarr's epic film.

Read the introduction to this video essay on MUBI's Notebook

Video essay by Michaela Popescu.

Anna Bogutskaya - critic and co-founder of The Final Girls discusses the popular trope of loneliness in Saint Maud as well as other Studiocanal films You Were Never Really Here, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Wicker Man.