Media and cinema studies faculty make 2018 best-of video essays list

Congratulations to Derek Long and Jenny Oyallon-Koloski, both assistant professors of media and cinema studies, for making the list of "best video essays of 2018" released by British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine. The roundup features videographic scholars and practitioners’ picks for the "most outstanding videographic criticism."

"Derek and I both find the videographic form compelling as an alternative way of communicating our research to a scholarly and popular audience," Oyallon-Koloski said. Both Long and Oyallon-Koloski incorporate videographic essay assignments into their teaching, in MACS 203: Contemporary Movies, MACS 284: Animated Media from Mickey to GIFS, and MACS 485: Making Video Essays.

Both professors' videos were originally published in the peer-reviewed journal [In]Transition, which includes creators’ statements that expand upon their scholarly and creative processes in creating the video essays, as well as the peer reviewer responses. 

In his creator's statement, Long describes his video "Remixing Rose Hobart" as an exploration of "how videographic approaches might help to unearth latent meanings within Joseph Cornell’s collage film."

"The precision and fascination in deconstructing it is unsurpassable," Sight and Sound magazine commented. Read Long's statement and the review of his piece: http://mediacommons.org/intransition/2018/03/07/remixing-rose-hobart

Watch Long's video:

Oyallon-Koloski's video, "America Is (Not) Cool," focuses on "choreography’s narrative centrality" in the 1961 film West Side Story. "By juxtaposing 'America' and 'Cool' in their entirety, my work emphasizes the choreographic and cinematographic parallels that strengthen the narrative ties between the two," Oyallon-Koloski wrote about her piece. "By avoiding immobility in my videographic analysis, I hope to provide the viewer with analytical and observational findings that cannot exist in written scholarship." 

"Ultimately, Oyallon-Koloski’s video essay gives the viewer a whole new way to look at the work and consider the importance of movement, rhythm, and sound in conveying key themes and nuances in the movie as a whole," wrote Cara Hagan, one of the reviewers. Read Oyallon-Koloski’s statement and the review of her piece: http://mediacommons.org/intransition/america-not-cool

Watch Oyallon-Koloski's video: