Series of events over three days (8-10 November) devoted to videoessays and filmmaking as a means of research, scholarship, communication and publication, with day 3 devoted to hands-on videoessay-making. Featuring internationally renowned practitioners and academic filmmakers and teachers from a range of career stages, these events will showcase videoessay and filmmaking activity and ask: What are the political, epistemological, and aesthetic advantages of filmmaking in the academic context, and what are its potentials? What place is there for experimental approaches to filmmaking in academic practice? What are the institutional opportunities for and impediments to the adoption and development of filmmaking in the academy? How can academics themselves learn and teach videoessay-making and filmmaking practice?
Organized by Alan O’Leary / Mathias Bonde Korsgaard / Sidse Prehn Thomsen, in association with the Filmmaking Research, Academic Film and Videographic Criticism research unit, Aarhus. Funded by the Cultural Transformations research programme, the Media, Communication and Society research programme, and the Department of Media and Journalism Studies, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.

Tuesday 8 November (evening) – Mini-festival screening of videoessays
Venue: Øst for Paradis cinema, Paradisgade 9C, 20:00-22:00
In association with 16:9 filmtidsskrift. Programme TBC.

Wednesday 9 November — Hybrid Symposium: Videoessays and Academic Filmmaking: Practices, Pedagogies and Potentials
Venue: Online (Zoom) and in person at Helsingforsgade 15, building 5342, room 333 (max 25 in-person attendees)
Register here for Zoom participation. To attend in person, please email Alan O’Leary.

09:00: Welcome and Introduction
Mathias Bonde Korsgaard (Associate Professor in Film and Media, Aarhus). Alan O’Leary (Associate Professor of Film and Media in Digital Contexts, Aarhus). Sidse Prehn Thomsen (Media technician and production teacher, Aarhus)
09:15: Overview: Videoessays and Filmmaking in an Academic Context
Mathias Bonde Korsgaard and Alan O’Leary
10:45: Break
11:00: The Practice of Filmmaking Research: Catherine Grant (Honorary Professor, Aarhus) and Christian Suhr (Professor of Visual and Multimodal Anthropology, Aarhus) in conversation
Chair: Alan O’Leary
12:30: Break
13:30: Teaching Videoessay-making
Christian Keathley (Walter J Cerf Distinguished Professor of Film & Media Culture, Middlebury College) and Jason Mittell (Professor of Film & Media Culture and American Studies)
Chair: Mathias Bonde Korsgaard
15:00: Break
15:15 – 16:45: Roundtable: Practices, Pedagogies and Potentials
Barbara Zecchi (Professor of Cinema and Iberian Visuel Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst), Jussi Parikka (Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture). Sidse Prehn Thomsen, Signe Uldbjerg Mortensen (Postdoctoral Researcher, Syddansk University), Kim Toft Hansen (Associate Professor in the Dept of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University)
Chair: Catherine Grant.

Thursday 10 November — Making a videoessay: Hands on practical training in videoessay-making for academics and graduate students at Aarhus.
Venue: Adorno Building 5008 (max 12 participants)
Hands-on training intended for those with little or no experience of videoessay-making or editing.
To reserve a place, please email Alan O’Leary.