Kevin B. Lee
-
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 the vanguard of inventive artistic practice in story, craft and form.” This year’s Art of Nonfiction Fellows are Deborah Stratman, Natalia Almada, Sam Green and Sky Hopinka. Grantees are Jem Cohen, Kevin Jerome Everson, Kevin B. Lee and Chloé Galibert-Laîné, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Leilah Weinraub. “This year’s cohort reflects our continuing desire to explore the space in between,” said Tabitha Jackson, Director of the Documentary Film Program, in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 23, 2018 -
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 International Film Festival to show prior to screenings of Jackie. It ends, as it must, with Melania Trump.
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 6, 2017 -
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.
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 17, 2016 -
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 feels like a hodgepodge of fight shots dropped in random, non-linear order—something approaching an impressionist abstraction of action filmmaking. So it was somewhat of a revelation that, upon taking a fight scene from The Bourne Ultimatum and slowing it down to half speed, I could actually discern that one split-second shot from a fight linked up rather well with the next, in a spatially coherent linear sequence.”
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 1, 2016 -
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 in the 1984 version.
by Marc Nemcik on Jul 14, 2016 -
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 Kiarostami’s films actively contrast with the deconstructive video essay form.
by Marc Nemcik on Jul 12, 2016 -
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 The Assassin, Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives, Jean Luc-Godard’s Goodbye to Language and more.
by Filmmaker Staff on May 24, 2016 -
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 relatively new form? Finally, how much creative leeway can a video essayist take with a filmmaker’s work without being disrespectful or misrepresentative? These questions arose last month when 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. Initially, Lee edited the video to music. But after receiving some complaints, including from the distributors […]
by Paula Bernstein on May 3, 2016 -
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 film took place within the walls of the filmmaker’s dying mother Natalia’s apartment. To re-orient himself in Natalia’s apartment, Lee reorganized the footage by room. Initially, he edited the video to music, using Schubert’s Impromptu D. 899 Op. 90 No. 3, not coincidentally the same music used in Michael Haneke’s Amour, which also follows an elderly woman’s demise. But after receiving some complaints, including from the distributors of the film, Lee reassessed […]
by Paula Bernstein on Apr 5, 2016 -
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. Nelly and an exploration of their relationship. As with all of Akerman’s work, there’s a deeply autobiographical element to the film — even more so now that we know it was to be her last. In the above video essay from Fandor, Kevin B. Lee has reorganized the film’s footage by each room in the apartment to emphasize how Akerman explores each space to reflect her relationship with her dying mother. Beginning April 1, No Home Movie […]
by Paula Bernstein on Mar 31, 2016
