April 19 – Share Abstract Trailers

Post Abstract Trailer videos to Google Drive and discuss in class

For this week’s Video Commentaries, choose a video from the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist.

April 21 – Visiting with Cydnii Wilde Harris and Will DiGravio ’19 (via Zoom)

We will meet with two rising stars in the videographic world, Cydnii Wilde Harris and Will DiGravio.

Cydnii Wilde Harris (she/her) is a film scholar and video essayist, whose work largely concerns the representations of marginalized communities, particularly the depictions of Black and brown women and femmes in film and television. She holds an M.A. in Cinema Studies from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and a B.A. in English from Spelman College.

Will DiGravio is the host of The Video Essay Podcast and writes the weekly newsletter, Notes on Videographic Criticism. He holds an M.Phil. from the Centre for Film & Screen at the University of Cambridge and a B.A. in Film & Media Culture from Middlebury College.

Before the meeting, check out some of their work below, as well as a few videos that they want to discuss with us:

First off, listen to the episode of Will’s “The Video Essay Podcast” featuring a conversation with Cydnii. As part of that podcast, Cydnii discusses one of her videos as well as one by another creator that you should watch:

Will is also sharing a video essay-in-progress that he is working on:

Additionally, you may be interested to see the excellent video essay Will produced for this class in 2017!

We will also discuss Cydnii’s video “The Original Ending”:

As discussed in the podcast, Cydnii and Will collaborated to co-curate the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist. There are dozens of videos on the list – I asked each of them to choose one to discuss with our class. Cydnii selected:

And Will selected “Unlocked by Jazmin Jones“: