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Watch: Eric Rohmer’s Uncertain Perspectives
I post my fair share of video essays, but arguably the most useful ones are the most specific, breaking down a filmmaker’s craft into a more ‘teachable’ method. Kevin B. Lee’s essay on the blocking,...
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Watch: Breaking Down A Hard Day’s Night Opening Sequence
Simple and effective: Kevin B. Lee breaks down the opening credits sequence of A Hard Day’s Night into four separate editorial strands. The main two are the “Beatles cam” trained on the running band...
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Watch: Jonathan Rosenbaum on Orson Welles at 100
Today would’ve been Orson Welles’ 100th birthday, so to commemorate here’s a new video essay made by Kevin B. Lee with critic/avowed Wellesian Jonathan Rosenbaum. This clip-heavy overview argues that...
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Khalik Allah and Kevin B. Lee on Online Platforms vs. Festival Programming
Kevin B. Lee’s Transformers: The Premake and Khalik Allah’s Field Niggas are radically different films. Lee assembles footage of the making of Transformers: Age of Extinction and related materials to...
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Watch: Ornette Coleman: Free Spaces
Shirley Clarke’s filmography is witnessing a much needed resuscitation thanks to the efforts of Milestone Films, and one specific title, Ornette: Made in America, is of particular pertinence given the...
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Watch: How to Shoot a Road Movie
The road movie is a frequently tread subgenre, rife with comedic, episodic and dramatic potential. It can also pose a challenge for those seeking a varied mise-en-scene, and in this deconstruction of...
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Watch: Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia vs. the Original
In his latest video essay, Kevin B. Lee places the original 1997 Insomnia (directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg) on the left and Christopher Nolan’s 2002 Hollywood remake on the right. Juxtaposing the same...
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Watch: Shading and Cutting in Cassavetes’ Shadows
Amid all of the internet’s Kubrick/Anderson/Fincher devotees, few video essayists turn their scalpel toward Cassavetes, perhaps in part because his directing prowess is not so easily distilled. Kevin...
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Watch: The Tarantino Death Toll
Ever wonder how many people have died in Quentin Tarantino films? Or what’s behind the director’s seeming obsession with killing? Kevin B. Lee, Chief Video Essayist at Fandor, has tackled the bloody...
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Watch: What Does Oscar Nominated Cinematography Look Like in 2016?
Kevin B. Lee has been considering the candidates in the major Oscar categories. In this video essay, he breaks down the styles of the five candidates (The Hateful Eight, Sicario, The Revenant, Mad...
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Watch: No Home Movie Room by Room
Chantal Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, takes on a deeper resonance following the Belgian filmmaker’s death in October 2015. The film is a documentary tribute to her dying mother, Natalia a.k.a....
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Watch: Inside the Rooms of No Home Movie, Take 2
Late last week, we published a video essay from Kevin B. Lee, chief video essayist at Fandor, about the spaces in Chantal Akerman’s final documentary, No Home Movie. Lee estimated that about 70% of the...
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What is a Video Essay? Creators Grapple with a Definition
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...
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Watch: The Best Films from Cannes This Decade
The Palme d’Or winners are one matter, but what are the best films to premiere at Cannes this decade? Kevin B. Lee unveils a personal canon in this video essay, making the case for Hou Hsiao-hsien’s...
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Watch: “Kiarostami: The Anti-Supercut Artist”
Kevin B. Lee, Chief Video Essayist at Fandor, set out to make a Abbas Kiarostami video tribute after his passing last week. Lee created this video to display his own learning process, realizing that...
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Watch: “The Original Ghostbusters Is Pretty Sexist”
The new Ghostbusters is set to release after months of trolling over its all-female cast. In his newest video essay at Fandor Keyframe, Kevin B. Lee takes a look at the six most prominent female roles...
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Watch: How the Bourne Movies Changed Film Fights
In his newest video essay, Kevin B. Lee breaks down how the Bourne series has changed the style of film fighting as the series continued. As he notes in a supplementary essay at Fandor, “At times it...
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Watch: “2016: The Year of Kristen Stewart”
Short and simple: in under a minute, Kevin B. Lee makes the case for 2016 as belonging to Kristen Stewart — she’s got four high-profile movies this year.
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Watch: “Not Another Camelot [How We Got from Jackie to Melania]”
Kevin B. Lee’s latest video essay is a desktop documentary taking a look at media perceptions of first ladies from Jackie Kennedy onwards. The short was commissioned by this year’s Rotterdam...
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Sundance Announces 2018 Art of Nonfiction Fellows and Grantees
The Sundance Institute today announced the four filmmakers and six grantees who comprise the 2018 Art of Nonfiction program. Launched in 2018, Art of Nonfiction is the Institutes’s program “working at...
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