The Indy Brief: The Video Essay as a New Avant-Garde

The recent emergence of what has come to be called the video essay or the videographic essay or the audiovisual essay represents a new cinematic avant-garde. It offers implicit and explicit critiques of both commercial media and the logocentric literature of academic cinema and media scholarship.

Scott MacDonald examines the historical roots of the video essay as critique, beginning with the work of early avant-garde filmmakers and going on to highlight key examples of video essays as scholarship, montage, and themselves, films.

MacDonald says it’s clear that the video essay’s easy availability online solves what was the earlier avant-garde’s biggest problem: you had to find your way to places willing to project it (and you still do).

Read MacDonald’s account on The Edge.

“Pedagogy as Encounter” is an honest, innovative, erudite, and profoundly student-centered work, says  Joel Dinerstein.

Author Naeem Inayatullah embraces the range of human behavior in the classroom, including emotions, discomfort, paradox, and spirituality. His method rejects all kinds of political correctness in favor of the openness of each student’s encounter with professor, text, and group.

He declares the teacher an imperialist by definition and suggests that any understanding of pedagogy must begin with such an admission. He then begins by deconstructing his own learning and examples from his family life. Nearly all the anecdotes are compelling, with the occasional helpful modest admission such as, “We never really know what sticks or why, do we?”

Read Dinerstein’s review of Naeem Inayatullah’s “Pedagogy as Encounter: Beyond the Teaching Imperative” on The Edge.

Watch the full launch of Pedagogy as Encounter.

A major factor to success during political elections stems from coverage on news and social media, which is why comprehensive election reporting is essential to healthy democracy. Though Democrats gained unexpected victories during the midterms, according to media critics, the GOP’s commanding influence on media continues allowing it to disseminate propaganda and disinformation.

Journalist and California DNC member David Atkins recently argued on Twitter that the big money of the liberal left “has allowed social media to become a right-wing toxic waste pool,” just as it did for AM radio, local newspapers, and TV news.

“You cannot cede the information space and hope to succeed,” Atkins said, further explaining that the left has the money to compete in media, but instead focuses on overfunding Senate races by tens of millions of dollars.

Read the full report on The Edge.

Despite all the economic woes poising them for victory, Republicans were not able to summon the “Red Wave” they were hoping for, resulting in a historic midterm election, wherein the party controlling the White House saw serious gains rather than losses.

In some key states, Republicans suffered major and unexpected losses. In Michigan, for example, Republicans experienced a total election wipeout that left them without any legislative power for the first time in decades.

Many have attributed this Democratic sweep, along with the overall underperformance of Republicans, to the tactics conservatives used while campaigning. Their strategies favored attacks on abortion and transgender rights and pushing election fraud conspiracy theories.

Read the full report on The Edge.

1. I worked at Twitter for seven years – this is what I want you to know | The Independent

2. How Close Are We to Nuclear War? | The Atlantic

3. Hakeem Jeffries Announces Bid For House Democratic Leader | HuffPost

4. A journey to the site of the Nord Stream explosions | BBC

5. US shamed as the ‘colossal fossil’ of Cop27 climate summit by campaigners | The Guardian