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 "The best video essay source on the web." (Roger Ebert) This is a web site built around original video essays and critical, personal writing about movies, TV, music, comics and whatever else interests its contributors. Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine, and Ken Cancelosi, it is published by Seitz and Cancelosi and overseen by editor-in-chief Kevin B. Lee and managing editor Max Winter.

Video Essays

  • Raised in Fear: The Superdynamational Horrors of Ray Ha...
  • CANNES 2013: Jia Zhang-ke's A TOUCH OF SIN
  • CANNES 2013: Joel and Ethan Coen's INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
  • CANNES 2013: Images, Part 1
  • VIDEO ESSAY: Wong Kar-Wai's Lust for Life

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Press Play

MUSIC VIDEO ESSAY: The Year's Best Foreign Films, Gangnam Style

Video
'You gotta ride The Turin Horse.' Is that what PSY—the ultimate foreign movie fan—is really singing?
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 28, 2012 12:01 PM
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  • 2 Comments
More: Holy Motors

VIDEO ESSAY: The Essential Online Videos of 2012

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Gangnam who? Watch these five must-see videos that are truly revealing reflections of our reality, a world of private lives made public.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 27, 2012 12:14 PM
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  • 0 Comments

VIDEO ESSAY: Twelve for '12 - The Best Films of the Year

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From start to finish, 2012 boasted films of remarkable variety and splendor; even the worst films of the year had something going for them. Here are twelve that stayed with me the most.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 26, 2012 2:06 PM
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  • 1 Comment

This Is 45: A Year of Video Essays at Fandor Keyframe

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Thoughts on the art and purpose of the video essay after a year in the trenches.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 23, 2012 11:09 PM
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  • 1 Comment

ON THE Q.T., CHAPTER 3: JACKIE BROWN: Quentin and Pam's Big Score

Video
Things don’t look good for Beaumont Livingston. His self-proclaimed benefactor, Ordell Robbie, has just posted $10,000 to bail bondsman Max Cherry in exchange for Beaumont’s release.
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  • By Odie Henderson and Jason Bellamy
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  • December 17, 2012 8:30 AM
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  • 4 Comments
More: Video, video essay, Odie Henderson, Jason Bellamy, Quentin Tarantino

VIDEO: The Essential Chinese Movies

Video
What are the essential movies that anyone curious about Chinese cinema needs to see? The following video of 50 essential Chinese language films – and expanded list of 100 essential films found further below – is my attempt at an answer.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 14, 2012 8:00 PM
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  • 0 Comments

VIDEO ESSAY: The Power of Padding in First Films by John Carpenter and Monte Hellman

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Scenes built specifically to ‘fill time’ for theatrical and TV release offer a surprise peek at the auteurist genius of John Carpenter and Monte Hellman.
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 4, 2012 8:38 AM
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  • 2 Comments
More: Monte Hellman

VIDEO: An Evening with Lawrence Jordan, Pioneer of Experimental Animation

Video
At an energetic 78, Lawrence Jordan may be riding the peak of his career. A major underground film figure since the ’60s (he co-founded the indispensable filmmakers co-op Canyon Cinema), Jordan has amassed a stunning body of work over the decades, with his pioneering collage animations holding firm as his signature creations. While films like Duo Concertantes, Our Lady of the Sphere and Orb made him a solid fixture on the experimental scene, his recent works like Enid’s Idyll, Beyond Enchantment and Solar Sight (his first to use color photographs) show him as joyfully engaged as ever in vision quests. As Michael Atkinson wrote on Keyframe earlier this year, “Nobody’s films come packing so many spontaneous ecstatic moments, in a recognizably and rapturously gorgeous context as Jordan’s.”
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • December 2, 2012 11:22 PM
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  • 0 Comments

VIDEO ESSAY: Out of Bounds - Making Football Movies Outside the NFL

Video
What would the NFL be today without NFL Films? Now in its 50th year, NFL Films took a professional pastime and ascended it into the realm of legendary drama. Critic Matt Zoller Seitz calls it “the greatest PR machine in professional sports history, one that could make even a tedious stalemate seem as momentous as the battle of the Alamo.” But if you stripped away the glamour and polish of these productions, what would a football movie look like, and what interest would it hold?
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  • By Kevin B. Lee
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  • November 15, 2012 10:52 AM
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  • 0 Comments

VIDEO ESSAY: BEAVER'S LODGE: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952)

Video
Reckoned by many to be one of the best films about Hollywood, The Bad and the Beautiful is pungent and occasionally acidic, and at the time of its release a clear sign that things were changing in the movie capital.
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  • By Jim Beaver
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  • November 14, 2012 12:12 AM
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  • 1 Comment
More: BEAVER'S LODGE (Jim Beaver), Jim Beaver, Serena Bramble, Video, video essay

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