VIDEO - Motion Studies #5: Variation on a Sunbeam

From now through April, the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival will present "Film Studies in Motion", a Web Series curated by Volker Pantenburg and Kevin B. Lee. This series, available on the festival's website and Facebook page, presents weekly selections of analytical video essays on the web, in preparation for Pantenberg and Lee's presentation  "Whatever happened to Bildungsauftrag? – Teaching cinema on TV and the Web", scheduled for April 28 at the festival.

Week Two: Cinematic Techniques on Display

The video essay format has quickly shown its abilities to illuminate and critique the techniques of filmmakers in ways that surpass the reach of traditional text-based analysis. This selection of videos creatively engages with various films to reveal surprising insights into the many dimensions of cinema: cinematography, editing, sound, etc.

Today's selection:

Variation on the Sunbeam
Aitor Gametxo (2011)

A 12 minute D.W. Griffith short is dissected and rearranged into multiple spaces playing out in real time, providing a revelatory view of Griffith's approach to storytelling and space.

View all Motion Studies video selections.

Volker Pantenburg is assistant professor for moving images at the media faculty of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. 

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog and contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter.