Reflections on Film: A Watchlist of Films and Video Essays
Today, video essays mark one of the most abundant and accessible mediums of film analysis. Look up your favorite movie title on Youtube, and you’re bound to find at least one or two videos delving deep into the development, history, or artistic content of each film. Combining captivating visuals and illuminating argumentation and analysis from the essayists themselves, video essays are a powerful opportunity for anyone to share their thoughts on a film all while showcasing their own cinematic flourish through their direction and editing of the video essay. And for consumers of video essays, these videos teach us even more about the films we love and make us love them more.With FACETS’ upcoming screening of After Yang by kogonada, we were inspired by kogonada’s own origins and work as a video essayist: a content creator for both Sight & Sound magazine and The Criterion Collection, kogonada has perfected the craft of the video essay through his sharp analyses and minimalist, powerful editing. You can find his full catalog of work here. We present a watchlist of some iconic films, along with video essays that spotlight interesting aspects of these beloved films.
TERMINAL STATION (1953)
kogonada’s “What is Neorealism”
Directed and produced by Italian director Vittorio de Sica, Terminal Station features actress Jennifer Jones as the married American Mary Forbes and actor Montgomery Clift as the Italian academic Giovanni Doria. The 1953 romantic drama focuses on the emotional climax of the affair between Mary Forbes and Giovanni Doria— as Forbes decides to end her affair and return to her husband and daughter in Philadelphia, Doria follows her to Rome’s Stazione Termini and begs her to stay. Filled with long, lingering takes and strong establishing shots, this classic takes a simple plot and expands the inner world of the film to all of Rome itself with a neorealist touch.
Terminal Station’s production history, however, tells a much less simple story. As the co-produced, international project between Italian studio Produzione Film Vittoria De Sica and American production company Selznick Releasing Organization— with Columbia Pictures overseeing its American distribution—Terminal Station found itself pulled between the creative visions of De Sica and American producer David O. Selznick. Ultimately, Selznick oversaw a major re-editing process for the film, shortening the original film from about one and a half hours to just over an hour and renaming the film to Indiscretion of an American Wife. The creative differences between these two films are illuminated in video-essayist-turned-director kogonada’s “What is Neorealism?” video essay: with an elegant, sharp, side-by-side comparison of the two cuts, kogonada illuminates the meaning of neorealism and its mark on cinema.
Watch kogonada’s video essay here, and FACETS members can rent Terminal Station from our Video Rental Collection here.
TRANSFORMERS (2007)
Kevin B. Lee’s “Transformers_The Premake”
With this year marking the 15th anniversary of the 2007 blockbuster classic Transformers, we’re inspired to revisit the beginning of an epic movie franchise bringing a beloved children’s comic and cartoon series to life. With Steven Spielberg as executive producer and Michael Bay directing, Transformers introduces us to the grand conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons and familiar, lovable characters like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. With Shia LaBoeuf and Megan Fox leading, Transformers cements the quite literally explosive, spectacular style of Michael Bay as a Hollywood staple.
In his desktop documentary titled “TRANSFORMERS_THE PREMAKE (a desktop documentary),” School of the Art Institute graduate Kevin B. Lee illuminates the process of big budget film production through the production and subsequent media wave of the fourth installment of the Transformers film franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction. With creative editing and a desktop documentary format that emphasize the internet’s influential role on the spread of information and the experience of that information, Lee combines 355 YouTube clips to paint a larger analysis of Hollywood film production, amateur video-making, and the big budget film industry’s presence in the real world.
Watch Lee’s desktop documentary here, and FACETS members can rent Transformers from our Video Rental Collection here.
THE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021)
Thomas Flight’s “The Absurd Intricacy of the French Dispatch”
Wes Anderson’s 2021 release The French Dispatch is perhaps the most “Wes Anderson” film yet. The anthology comedy drama, which premiered at The Cannes Film Festival, features a star-studded cast including classic Wes Anderson favorites such as Adrian Brody, Bill Murray, and TIlda Swinton. Anderson presents four short stories—each brimming with quirky characters and playful detail—through the frame narrative of French town Ennui-sur-Blasé’s The French Dispatch, a magazine now on its final issue following the death of its editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr. Each entry in the anthology presents an article for this last issue: as we follow an eclectic cycling tour of Ennui-sur-Blasé, the chaotic yet intimate career of artist Moses Rosenthaler, a passionate student protest turned “Chessboard Revolution,” and finally a dinner with the police force Commissaire interrupted by a kidnapping plot, each story fills the streets of Ennui-sur-Blasé with history, warmth, and life.
The format of an anthology allows Anderson to fully flex all his stylistic creativity: incorporating all kinds of visual styles and narrative themes, Anderson creates bite-sized perspectives into the world of The French Dispatch that read like visual candy. The extent of his idiosyncratic style exercised in this film is further analyzed by “The Absurd Intricacy of the French Dispatch,” in which video essayist Thomas Flight breaks down the visual rhythm of The French Dispatch.
Watch Thomas Flights video essay here, and FACETS members can rent The French Dispatch from our Video Rental Collection here.
ALIEN (1979)
kaptainkristian’s “Alien – H.R. Giger’s Beautiful Monster”
Ridley Scott’s Alien stands as a paragon of science fiction cinema. Starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, and John Hurt, the 1979 science fiction horror film has cemented itself in mainstream culture with its shocking, grotesque visuals and ever-increasing dreadful atmosphere. We follow the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo as it follows an unusual distress signal from a nearby moon: as the crew gets separated and every new detail found on the moon only spells danger, the crew of the Nostromo finds itself face to face with a monstrous alien creature complete with acidic blood and an internal set of jaws.
Birthing one of the most iconic Final Girls of horror cinema, Alien presents an atmosphere of sharp, cold dread and iconic visuals that have been loved for decades. Videoessayist kaptainkristian’s essay “Alien – H. R. Giger’s Beautiful Monster” delves deeper into the creative development of the Xenomorph through the work of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, whose distinctive style inspired one of the most iconic monster visuals in cinema history.
Watch kaptainkristian’s illuminating essay here, and FACETS members can rent Alien from our Video Rental Collection here.
Stephanie Chung is the Marketing Production Intern at FACETS, and a current student at the University of Chicago majoring in Sociology and Cinema and Media Studies. An avid consumer of video essays, her favorite video essayists include Thomas Flight, Jacob Geller, and Royal Ocean Film Society. She’s even made her own run at video essays with a video essay on the editing in Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue!