How Video Essays Can Fill Archival Voids w/ Barbara Zecchi - The Video Essay Podcast

foreign hi there welcome back to the video essay podcast the show featuring conversations with leading practitioners of videographic criticism I'm Emily subinco

the associate producer of the video essay podcast and I'm super excited about today's episode will and I spoke with Professor Barbara zecki prolific

video essayist and director of the film studies program at UMass Amherst I just graduated from UMass Amherst and have had the privilege of working closely

with Barbara in a variety of contexts so it was wonderful to sit down with her and will to discuss her origin story her

digital Humanities work including the hinocine project and how it relates to her videographic work and of course the International Conference on videographic

criticism happening at UMass Amherst in September before we get right into the conversation please consider subscribing to notes on videographic criticism a

newsletter that will puts out every few weeks that highlights essays video essays short interviews events related

to videographic criticism and more go to thevideosa.com to start receiving this treat in your inbox and please consider supporting the show

on patreon all right let's get into it thank you [Music] and now I am very pleased to be joined

by one of my favorite people who I've met since joining the video essay world and and doing all of this uh Barbara Zeki who is a professor at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst is known to probably everyone who's listening right now so we don't need a super long introduction prolific scholar video SAS teacher organizer

we'll get to this later of a very exciting video essay conference later this year the list goes on and on and also a student of Barbara's who everyone

here knows Emily soup and code the show's uh producer uh how are you both doing today Barbara welcome to the video essay podcast oh thank you so much for

this incredible introduction I'm really speechless now so what can I say thank you very much for having me and I really share the

same feeling about you and Emily you guys are among my favorite people and I feel like the future of our field is in such amazing hands you guys are both so

talented thank you and it's an honor to talk to you today we'll start off with the basic question that I know you know and I I already know kind of the answer to this

question a little bit but for for the you know for everyone who's listening in what is your uh we call it the origin story when were you first introduced to video essays and what inspired you to

begin creating them yourself tell us tell us about you so the origin story well I could respond to your question in just three words

Middlebury video camp in the summer of 2019 I attended the workshop on videographic criticism at Middlebury College

um this is where we met will and I and that total immersion in the theory and practice of the field was fundamental to me it provided me with the theoretical

tools I needed to understand really what I was doing and what I wanted to do I had the technical skills more or less but I I was lacking the foundation and I

must say that my technical skills improved dramatically during those two weeks in that summer marked a before and after in my work as a video essayist

because I was making a quote unquote video essays before I was always trying to use images to discuss images in my classes and for presentation at

conferences but they were not Standalone pieces they were simply meant to complement my written works so they were not video essays and so when you were in

the lead up to video camp or just kind of in your day in day out Life as a as a scholar and you know whatever uh who who were those video essayists that you were

watching or video essays you know how familiar were you with kind of this online community of practice that you have since joined and become like a key

force in before attending Middlebury College I had other influences you know my major influence was Maria ruido who does not belong to this community

um she she was introduced to me by one of my graduate students who wrote the dissertation on her she's a Galician visual artist who teaches the University

of Barcelona and makes video uh visual essays actually she calls them on topics such as I don't know the construction on historical memory labor under capitalism

on gender issues in particular I was influenced by her visual essay entitled the human voice which is a video performance about the violence contained

in language and this piece resonates powerfully in my work on the voiceover and in particular in my recent video essay title what is an accented voiceover

although I do the opposite of Maria ruido my maybe we can talk about this later if you like and I'm interested in Maria arudo Maria

ruidos use of the body and of the voice as a Production Tool because she articulates articulates a sort of a an

epistemological strategy a sort of an embodied way of knowing and I would say that the use of the body like that is

something like and Johannes binato uh do too and then another early influence this was again before going to to Middlebury

was Cecilia barrigas and cuentro entridos reynos meeting of the two queens yes great video yeah I think we walked we watched it uh at Middlebury and uh

and and I said oh yes I know this one it's a sort of a sort of a cult video essay in which she pretty contest is footage

from malanditric and Greta Garbo's movies and she makes them encounter and depicts her their romance and she gives

visibility to a lesbian subculture that were really there is Eid Hidden Still is hidden um by and within the dominant dominant

film discourse and of course uh my my favorite was Catherine Grant before getting to know her personally at Middlebury College I was fascinated by by her work on lucasia Martel because

I'm a scholar of Iberian and Latin American Cinema and in particular I remember watching The Haunting of the headlines headless woman at a conference and I thought oh

my God I want to do this and I think that it's one of the best example of what you can really do with the video I see that you cannot do in a

written text and and I think probably this is the video I said that made me click and and think I want to go there but you know I knew already Chris petely

and Jason mittel's book the first edition because I was using it in my classes and of course Chris Keithley passed the salt thank you for that and I think you touch on something that is so

important when we talk about videographic criticism and that is that we as video essayists often bring into the fold the work of other artists and

Scholars who may not be operating within the video essay tradition and we talk about video essay as this kind of umbrella term um I know that's something that's often negotiated in the Sight and Sound poll

every year where there's a whole mix of works and actually even just recently published on the podcast feed is a conversation between Chloe and Johannes and Kevin B Lee where they talk about curating video essays for the film

Explorer website and Kevin talks about reaching out to the artist whose work is featured um and I believe the artist said oh I hadn't I think Kevin rickhouse in the podcast asking you know do you think

this is video essay and they're just kind of I never considered it and so it's important to acknowledge that and I think that's one of the things that's so great about um this kind of work and also I think is

a perfect segue to asking you about could you talk in a little bit more detail the kinds of of work that you were doing pre pre-video essay but that has in it like traces of what we might

see in your your more recent video essay work oh yes thank you yeah my background is in gender studies

and in Iberian Cinemas before I'm either Middlebury I was making my first uh quote-unquote video essays um with the goal of you know my goal was

to denounce the representation of women's stereotypes in mainstream mainstream Cinema both in Hollywood and in commercial Cinema in male Ortho Cinema in Spain in particular I I was

working on the representation of violence that then women and gender diverse people in Spanish comedies or or on the trivialization of gender-based violence in federal moldova's films and

I and I was making you know I kind of call them video essay but you know visual products uh back then I made these works with in mind what Virginia

Woolf called the obstinate resistance reading that is deciphering texts that did not yield their meaning easily

Virginia Woolf was quite explicitable about it in in an essay she wrote that resistant reading implied stopping going

back rereading trying out this way try out the other way more or less like I'm just quoting um without you know I don't remember the exact quote but more or less this is a

quote and um but if we apply this strategy to audio visual cultural products doesn't she sound like Laura malby's concept of delay

um it seems like Virginia Woolf was already given instruction on how to make a video essay and I was already following those instructions I knew that

I had to do a granular deciphering of uh the representation of violence in mainstream Cinema because sometimes is it is hidden you know and then from that

I was also you know fascinated by by the work that Anita sarcasian feminist frequency you know she was doing this

was before her videos about video games and and then you know my my focus shifted uh to women's work

um and gynocine the invisibility of women filmmakers in the film industry um and all these under examined initiatives in swim practice

um that really disrupt canonical modes of depicting gender and and that pose Alternatives uh to the hegemonic representation so both my

books this infocados autofocus and La Pantages the gender screen dedicate a lot of space to Spanish and Catalan women in early Cinema

and the significant Trace that their last films had left through documents reviewing journals in newspapers

but I felt the urge to give these women filmmakers visibility beyond the written page so I started making

um a short documentary for instance uh short documentary interview and a sort of a video essay on Margarita Alexandre

who was in in 2007 she was the the only Spanish woman Pioneer still alive and she recently passed at the age of 94 and

then had been involved as a executive producer of a recent documentary on Elena giardi who is another pioneer and I've been contacting for another

film on two other early filmmakers Selena cortesina and Rosario p brujas and and then I made a you know I think I

mentioned to you that film that I made um and you were asking if it was available somewhere and and that was um a work that I made in in 2015. could

you just share the the the title of the of the film and just tell us a little bit about it and is is if and if it is available where it is the film you're referring to is a work I made in 2015

and it's a 90-minute film or ethnographic fake documentary called women film Pioneers the off screen and I

refer to the off screen as a concept um that I really like in feminist film Theory um this it's a concert study by Teresa

delaurentis and any Italian feminist it's the space in the gaps the interstices of hegemonic speech uh where

resides a feminist alternative discourse and so what I do in this in this film is a reenactment of women filmmakers uh

whose work has been lost something similar to what I I've done with more with my recent video essay on Elena cortesina it was uh Premiere in Sorrento

in Italy and then I presented the many conferences and and in a way the origin of my reflection upon the voiceover because if

multilingual work with voices speaking in French Italian Spanish Catalan English and it doesn't have subtitles and this is I thought

it was its Singularity but maybe it is also its flaw because I can understand it but not everybody can and it was not meant for people to understand

everything but it gets my audience kind of frustrated I think um so yes as I said um it can be considered as the first draft of what I'm I'm trying to attend

with the video essay about Elena cortesina um the filling the void and it's about my personal relation we lost films and

the use of the body as a Production Tool as I said before for Maria ruido visual essays yes it's available it's actually in Vimeo hidden um

hidden because it's very old but I don't know I I think that now I feel like I want to revisit it you know and make a different version so please don't look for it

we'll respect your wishes there but it's very exciting to hear you talk about that because one can really see kind of your the origins of so much of what

you're doing now right in in many different ways so that's very exciting but I want to kick it over to Emily now to ask you our next question yeah I love

hearing about your scholarly work and you talk about the ways in which you give visibility to women filmmakers and you mentioned the gynosine project which I've had the pleasure of actually

working as a research assistant with you and so if you could talk a little bit more about this project the work that you've been doing and how it connects to your videographic work

s in a project and here I cannot say there is a before or after with Middlebury College but I can say there is a before and after with Emily Cole

really but Emily cook came on board things changed dramatically as always so and I launched it in in 2011 so a long

time before Emily it was with a seed Grand University of Massachusetts and this is an Open Access online multilingual database that offers

resources related to the production of women filmmakers and among which video essays I created

um this neologism uh gyno Cena because you know back then I I felt this need to respond uh to the crisis of naming in

feminist film criticism that was denounced by Ruby rich in a in a seminal piece and I wanted to overcome these limitations of the term feminine Cinema

feminist cinema cinema by women women Cinema and so I decided to to name this Corpus in a different way gynocina and

um so in a way I'm trying to avoid all the connotations that are implicit in feminist feminine or by women or uh

women's cinema right and the project started with a very limited scope uh I wanted to give visibility to only to the long-lost works of women from Pioneers

again in early Cinema and and originally only um in the Spanish state and then very quickly

I realized that I I needed to expand it uh chronologically so it became all the generations of women filmmakers in Spain

and then geographically from Iberian Cinemas to Latin American Cinemas and then you really expanded globally with new regions with new regions

coordinators so Stefania benini did a huge work for the Italian section and then Emily came on board and helped me as research assistant but also as a

coordinator of the Asian gynocina with amazing contributions for which she received a Rife award last year

and yeah so they're women filmmakers bios filmographies interviews film reviews uh and some video essays so my

goal is is to keep expanding it um and and to create also I was thinking uh yes that we have to to dedicate the

space for the video essays we received that now are are just there they don't have a special space but maybe I can create a separate Vimeo showcase

yeah I think one of the awesome things that gynecina does is it brings Scholars together and there's such an awesome community of Scholars contributing work

um writing for the website and even students too so I know at UMass as a student I'm I was so grateful to have so many opportunities to engage in

videographic criticism um did my thesis and my thesis was a video say for example and I know some graduate students who are also working on video essays submitting to in

transition so could you talk a little bit more about that and talk a little bit more about the future for videographic criticism at UMass well now that you're you are leaving UMass I

don't know if there is going to be a future like we feel also sad that Emily's leaving um but yes full disclosure I'm totally biased I love UMass I'm so excited about

what we are doing at UMass in videographic criticism I'm really lucky um I'm working with my wonderful colleague Daniel Pope with whom I I really share this passion and Daniel

began teaching classes in film scholarship in digital media uh back in 2013 I think um at least 10 years ago and he was

teaching the first film classy that University working in podcast and in video essay forms and one of them is now a core course for our major and it was

approved as the junior year writing Jeanette requirement so we have more and more film majors and students in general that will explore videographic criticism

and then um yes many students doing video essays um there are students in in Daniel's

class but also in other classes in Department of communication for instance I saw there doing videography criticism both faculty and students and in my classes

of course um several of my graduate these advisees are making stunning videographic essays one of them failure science producer

video as if as her master thesis on the Catalan creative documentary and it was published in in transition then we have Emilio Beautiful video essay in dreams

as as you just said which was your honor thesis and also uh the Rolf Awards uh these are competitive annual prices awarded to

students whose work in filmmaking demonstrate exceptional creativity and for the first time uh we included a video essay in 2018

um it was nominated for for this award and now the trend is to have several nominations for this category and this year it was the first time that the

video essay won the best in competition award and again it was Emily's beautiful video essay on on dreams so yes so we are very active and I was

forgetting next semester we are going to have Chloe Gali Berlin teaching for our visiting filmmaker series a class on desktop filmmaking and also Johannes

binata is gonna be with us teaching two workshops uh and of course the conference um on the theory and practice of the video essay in September so we and we do

have many other plans for the future but now I'm gonna have a sabbatical so more soon let's now transition to talking about

something that you've alluded to um and that is your work on the what do you refer to as the accented video essay there's you've you've been very prolific

in this area so we'll have to go piece by piece and no one question can kind of capture it all but I'd be curious if you could share an overview of your work on

this topic and as you have written uh I I pulled this quote the need to further discuss the quote destabilization of hegemonic authoritative discourses parentheses male Standard English voice

over please discuss and everything that we talk about here I will just say will be at thevideosa.com links to Barbara's work on these various topics and things I should have said that earlier so um yes please go ahead Barbara yes thank

you will the accent yes such an important topic for me um I really appreciate this question because you know the accent is such a

part of my identity as an Italian who lived years in Spain so I have an accent when I'm in Spain when I was in Spain and now in the US so and now I even have

an accent when I go back to Italy they asked me where are you from so I don't want to pretend that I am an expert in the accented voiceover I just have an

accent um if I may add I have an accent like everybody else you have an accent too but as I said at the workshop on the

accented voiceover by paraphrasing George Orwell's Animal Farm um all people have been asking but some accents are more accented than others

right so um my interest in in the voiceover in the accented voiceover is really out of necessity

and this sounds quite topological but if I want to avoid the accent in my voiceover I can either avoid a voiceover

altogether by by following Ian garwood's advice or I can use someone else doing the voiceover for me and this is what I used to do before I go into Middlebury

College I had a couple of graduate students that had excellent vocal skills to doing the voiceover for my video essays one for Spanish and one for

English so it was not a concern back then it was just a nuisance basically and then at Middlebury College everything changed and I started to see

the political implications of choosing to do my voice over despite of or rather because of my accent so in the video camp we engaged

in discussing some practical and ideological issues around in the use of the voice over remember I I remember that I was doing we had to do the

voiceover exercise and I said no I'm not gonna do it I cannot do it I cannot use my voice and then uh this was just you know the beginning and then these

discussions continued with a round table at the scms conference in 2021 and it was organized and shared by Carrie

hegerty revoicing the authoritative voice over and it was 60 six of us uh six video campers

um that explored the use of first person voiceover um that falls outside the norm uh of what is considered

um appropriate academically um it could be tone uh register or uh

voices that suffer from credibility bias because they are either female or foreign accented or both like mine so

um for that round table I created a video I say what is an accented voiceover in which I put into dialogue cogonadas

seminal video essay what is new realism with his more recent nothing at stake on uh quaron's Roma

and my goal is to reflect upon Authority and power relations in language about the voiceover with an

accent but also about the voice of the other in cinema and about Hollywood's Hollywood versus accented Cinema so if you think

cogonadas is doing that um he does not talk about the voiceover per se but talks about the language of

film Vittorio de Sica has an accent while David sells Nick speaks standard Hollywood film language and the zika's

film language centers its interest on apparently less relevant characters he focuses the attention on characters that sultanic considered irrelevant and

disposable so like the character of Cleo Cleo inquirons Roma so this is the connection that I make

between cogonadas two video essays and then moreover while cogonada's video essay on new realism uses

a male voice over his more recent video essay on Roma is narrated in English by a female voice that talks about a simile

meaningless character in her words a character that would have interested but not selsnick so I don't know if I'm explaining myself but these are the

connection you see there are many layers that I want to put in that video essay and I inact to do so a series of displacements

so cogonada Standard English is displaced by my voice as um Maria ruido did in the human voice

the video this visual video I told you about at the beginning of the interview right but

my voice silences coconut voice so it's my my female an accent voice that covers coconada's male Standard English voice

and then I do another displacement my English narration is displaced by the narration of my voice in Italian

followed by a female Spanish voice from Mexico and then by indigenous languages from Mexico and Eastern chatino so all these voices

repeat in different languages the same sentence of the English narrator okagonada's second video essay

um her steps matter her voice too and so you hear the same sentence in English in Spanish in indigenous

language and another indigenous language so in my in my vid so while Maria ruidos voice uh in her video essay becomes more

and more muffled she covers her mouth with Scotch tape and she ends up not being able to articulate a word and at

the end of her video we only hear the male voice but what I do is quite the opposite in my video essay my voice takes over

and then other voices with less Authority so what I do is I empower the voice of the super term I don't know if I explain

myself and if my video essay shows this but this was my intention so in in brief what I wanted to do is ask myself or ask my

um viewers which voice has more authority to talk about an indigenous woman cogonadas made boys or the voice of a

indigenous woman and of course the answer is the latter right the voice of the indigenous woman uh so I I don't think the English voiceover is a

concession uh but is is not it's a mission towards the idiomonic language but quite the contrary one of the things that I so appreciate

about what is an accented video essay and then your your next piece empowering the accent an accented video essay which you made for the interrogating the modes of

videograph criticism conference um is you and you alluded to this in one of the earlier questions this kind of this sense of embodiment in the sense of the

personal is that we really feel you your your personal connection to this you know in the empowering the accent video you literally appear there's an image of you and you reenact

you do a line going down you and you say ow and there's a picture of Ian Garwood in your video um so not only is your voice present but your actual your

actual body and you're using that to reflect on so many different things right you aren't there's no uh it's

highly uh subjective in in a sense right like you're not uh there's a degree of vulnerability that you're you're allowing yourself in this

work and I was wondering if you could talk about that and how it how it feeds into these kind of video essays that are very ground and real things but then

also take on kind of a meta personal approach well I you know I see interesting that you talk about vulnerability because I should feel

vulnerable probably but I don't I actually feel so empowered by being able to do this I I think that

the trend is this my videos are becoming more and more personal and um and I'm not afraid of it I really don't care

and now I feel very comfortable with the audience I know that you know I prefer not to present them unless I really have to another setting

I can only imagine what would happen to show my video essay about Elena cortesina to um the these com this uh the annual

conference Girona where where I go it's a conference about um about early Cinema and it's all film

historians and they already are quite uncomfortable with what I I used to do before it was just you know

um my feminist interpretations imagine if I go there with the USA in

which you see myself divided into us I'm just laughing because I know I will do it like to provoke also you know and I think there is this but something

happened in Middlebury College really um I didn't have fun before it was just work and now it's fun and also something big it's so personal you know and it was not just me because you see we were all

reflecting about um how personally we're being with the voice over and uh even people that do not have to struggle with a foreign

accent were doing different things right uh and they we're all putting ourselves into the video essay um now I don't know why I cannot really

theorize it I don't have an answer but but it definitely this is happening so yes so but but you know what I can tell you is that I'm gonna do it I'm gonna

continue doing it um and and I have fun doing it it's pleasure that is so important to the

oretical and the for lack of a bad term like the weighty subject that you're dealing with like it actually it's it's interesting how this kind of fun and

personality that you bring to it that maybe quote unquote like serious academics may be like turned off by like I think in the video essay format that's what actually makes it that much more

impactful and resonant and gripping and that it lingers with you because I and remember those conversations that we had at video camp where you were talking about the voiceover exercise and so I

know your personal connection to this work but I think that that comes through even if for someone who had never even known you watching this video it's it's very self-evident and and very impactful

I think yeah that's the point to create an impact for me on me definitely you know and then I don't know on those who are watching me if

it's possible or not but yeah but definitely on me yeah and I think that gets at why we even do videographic criticism in the first place and what are the unique capabilities of the form

because I think hearing someone's voice is very different than reading something that might be written in first person obviously you can connect with that

emotionally but there's something really compelling about hearing their voice and with an accented video essay you can kind of

hear where they might come from and kind of there's more to a voice than just listening to a voice than just reading it yes absolutely you say very well

Emily I agree with you yeah definitely yeah and so as we're talking about how you put yourself in these video essays I think we can move on to talking about uh

filling feeling the archival void the case of Elena cortezina uh flor de Espana I don't know right um if you could talk a little bit more

about how you came up with this idea and just walk us through the origin story yes absolutely uh thank you yes I created this video essay for the panel

digital digging videographic approaches to archival footage Chair by Evelyn kratzer at the scms conference this year and as I was telling you before I worked

extensively on women film pioneers and I dedicated many years of my life to archival research on women directors in early Cinema in particular

um but not exclusively in the Spanish state um and I worked a lot on Elena cortesina

so this video essay is about the long-lost melodrama flor de Espana directed by Elena cortesina in 1921.

this is the only film by this extraordinary woman who started as a dancer then moved to acting both in

cinema and in theater she even worked with Federico Garcia Lorca she left Spain during the Civil War after lorca's assassination

and she went into exile to Argentina where she worked in theater and then she even founded her own theater company so

why why did I choose this film why flor de Espana why is it relevant you know I get you know I got so passionate about this is when I talk about this film

because well first of all it's the first feature film directed by a woman in the Spanish state second it's the only film by Elena

cortesina she's the director the producer the protagonist of the film the story was written by a man the script although we can only talk about script back then

but the story was written by a man a priest Jose Maria Granada the film is lost but we have a lot of evidence

um that she was the sole director I even found a film synopsis and very recently just before the Kobe outbreak they found

the score so we have a lot of a lot of traces but it's the beginning of the Francisco Franco regime Helena cortesina's

authorship began to fade little by little first it was attributed by Elena cortezina and Maria Jose Granada and

then the credit of the direction was given only to Jose Maria Granada and this expropriation happened uh in

the 1940s but believe it or not it persists still now in some public Publications and important Publications

so it makes me so angry and and this is not the only manipulation of historical data by

Francisco Franco's film historians um just just sorry that I open a parenthesis uh but you know I I have to to to tell you this for instance

they even change the dates or the very first film in the history of Spanish cinema because it was inconceivable for the Franco regime that the history

of Spanish cinema could begin with a film from Barcelona about a bar fight and this is the title of the first film

history of Spanish cinema fight in a cafe in a bar right by Futo what they did they forged the date of another film of religious topic made two

years later they changed the date and pretending that this was the first film of Spanish cinema so you know there is so much to denounce um

and Elena cortesina is not the only case and or this first film by Futo de labert there are many others many other expropriations

um and um so I I really wanted to to do something about this and this is why you know I wrote uh articles

um the first chapter of my first book is about this but then I needed to do something else you know to continue and and this was the perfect occasion you

know when Evelyn asked me to participate I said Yes again Elena cortesina and and it was the first time I think that I did this something uh using the

desktop documentary approach I did I chose the desk this desktop documentary approach without thinking about it it came natural to me I wanted to show my

personal involvement with this last film and the desktop documentary approach allowed me to show kind of the Reconstruction process the

archaeological work of putting together its species even though some of these species are false species so it's like I think it's like the work of an

archaeologist when they uncovered the artifacts they cleaned them they labeled them they classify them I felt that the desktop

approach was showing that and I'm thinking you know when I when I was doing this video I was thinking uh a memory of my childhood uh when I went to

Greece to to see the nosos Palace of great great and um it's where there are these fresh cause of um

people leaping over boots I don't know if you're familiar with this but it's when you go there it's you see like a puzzle of many missing pieces

pieces that have been reconstructed so what survives of the original frescoes amounts to uh no more than a few square

inches all the rest of the first course is more or less a reconstruction that was commissioned in the first half of the 20th century so the original pieces

if I well remember are thicker so you can tell the difference what is original very little and then what is fake and it's thinner it's just painted

and and this is the debate with archaeological sites right whether should the site be reconstructed as we believe it was or should the site be

left as it is uh for visitors with no clue uh of the site um to understand what it means

and so this is more or less what I meant to do with this video essay a reconstruction of the original from a few pieces that we have found

and I don't know if I don't know I don't know if it works or not but this is uh what's the idea it absolutely works I think that uh analogy to the archaeological dig and sight

reconstruction is brilliant and I I think makes complete sense and I think one of the things that I appreciated about your desktop documentary approach and there's a million different ways we

could tackle it is because there it it also does a great job of showing your labor as it relates to this project your

Gathering of materials over time you know and the desktop is a place where we put those things and folders our jpegs our word docs our PDFs so you know those

types of things and I think we really feel the way that you've gathered and worked through material as you said we can trace this back to the first chapter of your first book and I I think

that's what's really special and I think to your point you've decided to reassemble this you're you're not trying to reshoot or recreate the film but reassemble it to

deliver in this specific moment via this specific format and this is the approach that you're taking yes and it's so personal you know please don't laugh at

me or you can love you wrong but those tears of joy that you see in my eyes um are real you know when when I I

reconstructed this film I felt completely emotional so I thought I have to visualize this emotion it's important to include it and so there is a lot about my personal feelings

um also because um as I said before I really feel the the anger and the pain of women's work being attributed to men and so

actually the initial idea uh with this video essay was to denounce the expropriation um but you know this is something that I've already done in in my written

pieces about cortesina so I thought um I've done enough of denouncing and deconstructing so let me now let's now construct something and so I the first I

think the um there is still a first part of the video that I did not include didn't make it to the my final cut of the video essay that's entitled

um the lies of the archives and maybe I will you know I will I will expand it and make another video or a continuation of the first part of

this video but then I ended up just doing uh filling the void or rather feeling the void and and this again you know it's making fun at myself as a

native speaker of Italian because it's really very hard for me to tell the difference between feeling and feeling uh you know an Italian speaker does not

distinguish between e and e it sound the same it's very hard for me to tell the difference and to pronounce it I never know if I say to my students take it

please take a sheet of paper or take a sheet of paper so feeling and feeling the boy is the same I'm feeling and feeling the void well I would never laugh at your tears

Barbara and I I think when you sent me this video I say some weeks ago or months I don't recall I wrote back to you and I said I I felt like crying

myself a little bit and I'm I meant that because it's incredibly moving all of your work in this but I think the last

segment in particular where this work is brought back to life in a sense and and reanimated is incredibly moving and and

Powerful I think it charts a way forward for videographic criticism in the sense that how do we think about these archival voids and what they mean for

videographic criticism and that just because the material that we might not be used to working with like you know a 4K of whatever blockbustered you know

film you know we don't you don't need that to create something in this format because of it thank you yeah the the the the last part when well at the beginning

there is a is about the destruction of a film patrimony made by censorship

and we can talk about fire like in Cinema Paradiso there is a fire but the fire was not the only culprit

and in fact the work of many of these filmmakers and I know for sure that another film

ties by Lena giardi which is also lost might have been destroyed on purpose because uh it included sexual explicit images

uh and so they they had to make it disappear during the Franco gym and I'm sure it also happened the same with films by the Italian Pioneer Elvira

notari that she was censored in Italy by Fascism and her film were smuggled to the US uh for Italian immigrant to watch but it

was also censored here during the production code so I'm saying all this because I think at the end when I I put myself in place

in the place of the actor that looks at all the kisses of uh that the sensors had cut

but you know it's in my video I say it's not the kisses it's uh pieces of other films that reconstruct the pieces of the puzzle right

um I think it means that these pieces of the puzzle are like you know love like kisses to me and and then of course

morikone music uh does the trick because you always cry when you have more reconnaissance soundtrack sorry but that was easy uh to have tears in my eyes but

yeah yeah I love that imagery um and I I love that part when your face comes up as if you're watching the screen and finally experiencing what

could have been the film and I think your video it has both elements of being poetic and

explanatory so could you talk a little bit more about how you balance those two tones thank you Emily you know I did not think

about it I'm so glad that you find that there is a balance I was just trying to avoid uh duplicating what I have already

written about this film and therefore I wanted to avoid the explanatory mode uh but then you know I needed to explain so this is why I feel

so happy that I can tell you about this and and also you know I I recorded we recorded the panel and yes scms

conference and I made another video in Vimeo because at the panel I explained what I'm gonna what I'm going to do with what I'm doing with this video essay so

I I felt the urge to explain but I'm glad that you say that there is a good balance there you know I was more concerned as I said before to achieve

another balance the balance between playfulness and vigor so I'm not sure how it would be received among among film historians

um with whom I have already found funny difficult to share my my work my feminist interpretation as I said before um so I I don't know I really don't know

and I don't know if I can maintain this balance if I want to make other video essay um because you know I would like to to

continue doing this with other filmmakers uh but I'm not sure that I will be there in you know my presence my physical

presence my body my face my tears it can become you know maybe too much so this could be like a trailer and then make other videos

um with different balances but I still don't know one of the things I appreciate about the video is it's the the various segments

that you have like you begin with grounding the video in the scholarship that's exists out there of videographic criticism and then you get

to the archive in the void you seek to fill in part two and then in then you recreate um flor de Espana in uh by the end of the essay

why was it important for you to structure the video in this way and in particular to ground the work in videographic criticism at the beginning

um because that's not something I think a lot of times that is implied in in video essay work but I I appreciated the way that you made it explicit at the beginning so could you it's kind of a

two-part question but could you walk us through that thank you this is an excellent observation because I really um I did it when it was finished and then I

thought something is missing here and and I contacted Cormac um because I remember his talk

um at this conference exploring the modes that he was talking about the archives of the imagination and so he very kindly shared his text and

published texts still with me and it was perfect and and then he was he was quoting Jason um

about you know a quote uh in which he Compares uh soft the software the premiere with an archive of sound and

images so I thought this is perfect it's really what I want to convey um and so yes so I start with uh two

quotes Jason and and cormack and and I think that again here they make reference to the to their body as a

Production Tool because our body stores images and we connect our memories to Media through our imagination so I think this was really a summary of what I

intended to convey uh and then I continue asking myself uh if the video essay can bring back a film

that is lost but exists only in my imagination and and which is more than imagination because it's more than

imagination it's what uh Marianne Hirsch in a completely different context cause post memory

hish talks about the Holocaust and according to here's post-memory is that feeling

uh that the relationship that the generation after Bears to the memories of those who came before and therefore they remember experiency that they were

transmitting to them very deeply but they did not experience firsthand and so I think imagination and emotion

and affection um is what make me remember something I did not experience directly so this is what I'm trying to do with this video

essay uh um imagining a feeling uh something that I did not see I did not watch I did not experience

uh and then you know something else that I had uh and it was easy for my imagination uh to to be fed

was you know the film synopsis and this is what I do in this I think is this the first still in the first part of this video I say I I translate it into

English and then I analyzed you know segment by segment and I describe no it's in the second part of

the video essay right so I and I illustrate all the segments all the paragraphs of these synopsis uh by um you know

using um footage from films of uh of that period uh the the films I chose span between

1905 and 1931.

and this is like you know the the archaeological reconstruction I I mentioned before the pieces of the the missions missing pieces of the puzzle

and so uh I use blood and Sand um City Lights um when the dancer at least you know then

motherhood um in also Le vampire with mussidora and so that that this is what I what I do

what would I try to do yeah I love that idea of post memory remembering something that you didn't experience directly but nevertheless feeling

um and I love that part of the video essay when you show us your Premiere and we can see the pieces and then we finally see the full picture um at the end so that was that was

really emotional for me um but when you were talking about your childhood memory of the frescoes and that question of should we leave the

site as it is or should we reconstructed and I think what's brilliant about this video essay is that I feel like what you're doing is it's kind of simultaneous as we're watching

that reconstruction we do still feel that void so it's as if the site is still left as it is in a way but that reconstruct that

reconstruction we we're still able to experience something a reconstruction of it so yeah I don't know maybe it's fake

but uh without pretending that what is fake is real right yes okay thank you yes I like that so I feel less of a forger now

laughs I love that Insight Emily I I think that's spot on and Barbara you've touched on this a little bit but I want to ask you

a little bit more directly and was creating this video cathartic for you in any way like what

were you feeling as you made it oh absolutely cathartic is the word um I felt like as if I found

how do you say this in Egyptian I I felt like I had found the the film you know this happens you know

films are still lost film can still be found in the basement of someone or hidden in a box uh cookie box somewhere

and so I felt like you know I found it I I had this this feeling the um and and also a feeling of of revenge

against uh the uh film historians that attributed the film to to a man so I made no it was really

you know a dream come to come true in that vein and again this is something that you've alluded to in talking about kind of your overall relationship with

film historians and some academic or conference settings that are not explicitly videographic in nature but I would just be curious to know how this project has

been received and you know that could just be sharing it with a couple of colleagues via email um and I'm thinking specifically by Scholars who Maybe

this Falls within their area of expertise and area of study but maybe are not videographic critics like I would just be curious to know anecdotally what they've what they've

made of it well I'm actually very bad at sharing my my work I make it and then I forget about it and move on to the next project so I I did it you know I had to

to prepare another video essay to produce it for a conference on Catalan studies and and I I presented it at UMass for the

North American Catalan Society conference and I was very nervous about presenting uh I couldn't present presented this video uh because Elena

cortezina is from Valencia so she would have fit uh the scope of the conference but I was too scared and I and I presented another video I say and I was scared enough that I had to do an

introduction explaining what I was doing videographic criticism and it was so explanatory mode um and people liked it I think I showed part of this uh to Emily right people

people liked it you know maybe I should not be so scared um or I should care less but um yeah but this video

um except for you too and the people that attended the panel at the scms I don't think anybody else have seen it um and uh so I really appreciate your

interest in this conversation with you because you know feedback is more more than welcome and um and and yes and and the idea is to to

continue you know now I have a sabbatical leave so I I'm gonna I really have time to dedicate to to doing this

so yeah so I hope I can I can do a maybe a videographic book uh on the reenactment of lost films by women Pioneers

um I have you know I've studied many of them um in Italy in Spain and in France and uh and I don't know if I want to to do

the book all on um Spanish Pioneers whose work is is lost

or or not or or maybe expand uh to other countries I still don't know but um I think it can be a cool project That's so exciting

um along that same thread this video is a work in progress um so could you talk a little bit more about the goals for this project and maybe talk a little bit more about how

you want to expand it I want to make a a videographic book on the reenactment of lost films by women

pioneers and so this would be one chapter on Elena cortesina uh the goal of this book would be to give visibility

to unknown production by by film directors also to situate this kind of um quote-unquote recovered Corpus within

the terrain of female Cinema maybe to study the specificity of female creativity or maybe to contribute to the project of rewriting film history and

include more women and it's really needed in Spain as I said before you know things are changing luckily but people can talk about the history the

beginning of the history of Spanish cinema without including a single name of a woman you know so I think it's you know I feel that this would be a contribution

to change that and so I I would like to to discuss other cases of expropriation or women's authorship

early women Film Production is is the victim of a systematic and endemic process of this appropriation I would

almost call it the dispossession which has taken many different forms and at many different levels um and I was I was writing about this

recently um I wanted to you know to really to to analyze the kind this phenomenon so and I distinguish like three different

level of disappropriation one is oblivion uh Oblivion forgetting is the most generalized and apparently the most

innocent way of dispossessing it's like you know the passage of Time covers the name of women with dust their

Works disappear gradually from history and there are no obvious culprits the Canon is not written by itself so if the

works of women filmmakers do not make it into the history of Cinema if their names are unknown or if they cease to

exist it is because because the Guardians of the Canon who are mostly men have no interest in protecting the female presence from passing the time

and then there is a manifestation which is uh at the opposite extreme of this phenomenon because it has uh obvious

perpetrators and I would call this this other kind of dispossession

usurpation which is in modern terms a misappropriation of authorship um for instance in Spain Maria

alejarraga uh she was a a playwright or Anita laws with her screenplays or Margaret Kim with her paintings

their husbands systematically took credit for what they created and uh after the death of her husband tried without luck to get the copyright of her

Works Anita laws when she wanted to divorce discovered that her money was in the private accounts of John Emerson

or Margaret King sued her ex-husband and she was of the three the only one who won and these are just a few examples of

this process of user patients that have come to light but undoubtedly they must me they must not have been the only ones and then there is a third type of

disappropriation and is the programmatic manipulation of some historians who correct the history of Cinema to attribute Works directed by women to men

and so Elena cortesina is one um and then Roberto palolela in Italian a very distinguished historian who wrote

Italian historian who wrote the story of el Chile in in 1956 50 57 attacked um

in his writing the films by Dora film uh which was the producer company of Elvira notari and attributed the direction of

el virenotari's films to her husband and so there was this fallacy that he created that the director El viranutari

was only in charge of the stories and luckily Elvira notari's son was interviewed and said no no it was my

mother directing my my dad was only carrying the camera yeah so this is uh you know there is a lot to say and

and I'm planning you know I I would like to to continue uh working on this uh topic and making video assist on on this

topic um I I feel good I feel I'm doing something useful you know that sounds fantastic I I can't wait and I hope you I feel that this it's very

exciting what you talk about as a videographic book and kind of I know that Jason Mattel is very involved in that and kind of thinking through what this could look like I don't know how I don't know how far along you are in in

thinking it through but have do you see this as something where you would release installments publicly one at a time and then they would all come together as a book project

or like how does that work you know I I'm planning like tomorrow to start working on a proposal and send it to do what he thinks

things except from there and and I don't know what his uh you know he he would think that am I allowed to to publish

chapter by chapter as we do and and share them you know on our social media or or should I just keep them and then

publish all of them at once I don't know I don't know and um I I really don't know but you know things happen while you do them so I'm now concerned about

it something will happen about it for sure yeah well that's great to hear and the great tease for everyone so we'll be sure to keep everyone listening uh

updated and speaking of Jason talking about videographic books and teasing things and the future I think it's time

to transition to kind of the third um part of our podcast the conference the theory and practice of the video essay International Conference on

videographer criticism at UMass Amherst uh this fall in September um something I know Barbara has been in the works for quite a while

um I think you and I were talking like maybe in 2020 or years ago I don't even know you were like in the sometime and we're gonna do we're gonna do it now it's it's finally happening in person which is really exciting and Emily I

know has been involved in that so so I'm sure you both will have so much to share with us in this part but you know and this is this is the part of the show we would typically talk about a video essay made by someone else but because this conference is kind of in the future and

it's bringing together so much work it really fits kind of the purpose of this segment so I'll I'll just add that in um but could you just generally walk us through the the kind of the history of

the lead up to this conference and why what prompted you and and Daniel and Emily and everyone at UMass to to start it um and then kind of in that ad how you

see it fitting into the existing work at UMass that we've already been talking about yes you know the seats of the conference were planted at Middlebury College so you see how crucial

Middlebury College summer camp was for me yes it was a promise I made to to Jason mittel um I asked if we could do a sequel of

the video camp and and he answered why don't you do a conference and yes the conference is gonna be a wonderful way to continue

conversation among video essays that was the goal and also is going to be a great reunion of many people that belong

um to to these four actually five cohorts of video campers I'm I belong to the fourth one and my colleague Daniel Pope uh who's gonna who is the

conference co-director is going to middlewood College in two weeks so he belongs to the fifth cohort and there are many more people from previous

generation who are going to join us so yes so I really felt uh the need to do something like this after the Kobe lockdown and I think actually the conference was supposed to be done

before but then you know everything was suspended because of of the lockdown in a way the lockdown became a wonderful

opportunity for all of us to exchange our works thanks to to this many really excellent virtual initiatives we had

conferences your podcasts Ariel avisar's TV dictionary uh Evelyn Croucher and Ariel's Once Upon a Time part two two

iteration of the scms conference with several panels some videographic criticism and also I don't know if you've seen today there is a new initiative launched by Evelyn on moving

poems so we have so many we had so many opportunities to talk to each other and share our work but we've done everything remotely and I think now we need

something more and I'm really looking forward to it So Daniel uh Pope Emily and I formed a

committee and other wonderful colleagues and graduate students joined us and we basically spent this year working on on the logistics and that's you know the

major work for a conference so we managed to secure an absolutely amazing venue on campus no spoiler but I'm so happy about this and then we had to do a

lot of fundraising because you know we are a public institution but everything you have to pay for and and so we we managed to secure two grants from UMass

then the grad school is giving us funds the international program office many departments on campus and also um Departments of filming media studies

uh from the five colleges you know that UMass is part of a Consortium of five colleges so also Smith college Amherst College Montpelier College are contributing

and I think the timing is perfect for UMass because we invited colegali Berlin to teach a class for our visiting filmmakers of the 21st century so she's going to be on campus in September and

also you understand as I said before he's going to do a scholarly Residence at UMass and he will teach two workshop for us so we are taking advantage of their

presence and so they're gonna be two keynote speakers and then also Katie Grant and Jose Mitchell have also graciously accepted our invitation

so it's gonna be really amazing having them as keynote speakers and then now we are in the process of defining the

program and uh and there are very really fascinating things it's very exciting uh and I think you touch on speaking personally one of the things that I'm

most excited about is this chance to meet so many people in person you know I feel like I've built genuine friendships online and the pandemic through all of these things and it's like oh that

there's a real person out there and I know that there are folks who are traveling from all over and this will truly be an International Conference as you know probably better as you know and but um and

um actually Emily had a had a question uh that when we were talking about prep for this about kind of the other colleges and universities in in Massachusetts

yeah yeah of course um Barbara you talk a little bit about how the other colleges are participating as sponsors so I was wondering do you

see videographic criticism expanding out like in within the five College Consortium as well I think so yes uh we

had one submission uh by a student passing from Mount Holyoke College

and but the response was amazing you know they were very interested this year I'm serving on the Council of film

studies of the five colleges and so I had a chance to to tell them about uh the conference and they are all excited

and you know there is this exchange of students so I'm counting on the students um students from other colleges to come definitely this is going to be an

important piece to disseminate the field also in the other college where there is a huge presence of film studies Emily worked

for the five College film festival right it was last year last year and yeah so we have the five College film festival and and you presented the video essay for

that if I remember well right yeah we had the five College undergraduate film and media studies conference and there was a panel for video essays so that was really exciting yeah but yeah definitely

uh now actually I'm gonna submit an application for another Grant because what I I'm hoping to do is to lower the cost of the conference fees especially

for graduate students um because the hotel is expensive so I'm trying I'm working I'm still working on on fundraising and the last piece is gonna be that Grant and I hope uh we're

gonna get it but you know these grants are important also because you you make yourself known to do the other

institutions so so that's really um yeah it's it's super exciting yes and I also I think that I can say for sure that the field has expanded so just

looking at the the applications the submissions it's it's growing and and it's becoming more rich and more nuanced and and also more diverse remember that

discussions that we had um this December about gender of video essayists the the the presence of the

voice over the it's always mailbox over Etc and and I'm seeing you know it looks like this conference is well gender balanced and unfortunately we did not ask participants to indicate their

gender at the time of their submission but I'm assuming just by their names and I know that sometimes it's their wrong assumptions but more or less I have the sense that it's uh there is equal

representation which is absolutely great also we've seen many submissions from abroad uh we received abstracts from

Sweden from Spain from the UK the Czech Republic Germany Israel also from Latin America among other countries and and

also something else that I really like is the half submissions are from faculty and the other half is by graduate

students 100 graduate students and some independent researchers so it's about 40 presentations plus four Keynotes so now

the challenge is to fit everything in two days um because we don't want to to have parallel sessions it would be great to

share absolutely everything um and not having the audience to to decide where do I go you know and what I'm gonna miss so we are gonna work on

that next week actually tomorrow Emily you're invited more than invited it seems like tomorrow's a big day for you Barbara you have this meeting you're

starting the video graphics it's all having that's no that's very exciting um I'm wondering Barbara if you give us a sense that you know

spoiling anything or you know sharing anything that folks wouldn't want to be shared just the types of papers and panels that one might expect to see at

this conference which I should add it's taking place from September 22nd to the 23rd and you know it's still that while

the cfp has closed of course it's attendance is still obviously possible and it give us a sense of what we might expect when we when we go okay and I'm

trying not to do a spoiler here yeah but yes so in addition to video essay on Hollywood Cinema which are really in a minority we receive proposal on Chinese

Japanese Galician Spanish French Austrian Irish Brazilian

Colombian Palestinian film Productions so amazing then we have video essay on film adaptations of film genres in

particular on horror Cinema then uh I'm thinking about your podcast recent podcast with Ariel

he was saying how many how few video essays on on TV series well they have videos on TV series on theatrical exhibition and television broadcast or

music video on poetry and folklore inspired text and music on paintings on poems on TV commercials on Youtube

videos uh and on the short scholarly video and also on understanding and podcasting the labor and practices of video essay

does it sound familiar but let's say paper right are you doing a paper on that uh wheel right that's a question for future will he hasn't decided yet

but I think there will definitely be I my ambition is to maybe try and create some sort of audio collage yes this is what I thought it goes with it so that's

the ambition but I do think a portion of it will be uh a paper but I think we'll really see I kind of have to go through this Archive of my own stuff to figure

out what what exactly is in there yes no I think it's super exciting did you see so it's amazing variety and diversity and then topics we will certainly put

together one or two panels on gender because we receive video essays on proposals on female sexuality women's

paranoia uh gender-based violence feminist non-linear narrative strategies of of you know team strategies to create

feminist narrative then Hollywood's gender inequities then we are going to have a panel on Race um

a question of structural racism immigration video essay on the landscape addressing issues such as Echo criticism

I was just today Katie Grant posted one of her entry right on Echo criticism and video and videography criticism and we

have at least three video essays on this topic environmental concerns the landscape as a spectator um tropes within desert epic films and

how they relate to orientalism then of course affect videographic criticism criticism as an act of remembering and sharing dreams Emily you're presenting

that by and then many video essay on sound I think we can have at least two panels on sound um on music video space on the use of

sound in Steve McQueen's lovers rock or an exploration of footsteps in Hitchcock or on the soundtrack explore without a temporal engagement with a fintext

and then another range of topics spun from editing technique techniques such as the

star wipe or on the rack effect or on the Cyclorama we I didn't know what it was it's a I had to check it out so it's

a that curved cornerless background using advertising music video in cinema

General white or on the fanish genre of the crossover or even on epistolar video so the really amazing and also there is

a panel um on which is a meta videographic Reflections uh title organizing chaos

videographic Works in process so as you see pretty amazing it isn't it wow what a lineup I'm like I this is

going to be like Christmas in September I can't I can't wait not that last panel you mentioned I've heard a little bit about through the grapevine and I'll I'm really looking forward to that one I'm

curious and Emily I'd be feel free to jump in here because I'd just be curious to know what it's been like for you to kind of be involved in this whole process but just quickly

Barbara what is the breakdown between video essays on various topics and then papers and videos on videographic

criticism and when you were going about this conference was the goal to because I mean both ultimately at the end of the day contribute to the field in various ways but just in kind of two different

approaches so was was there a goal to kind of have a mix was that what you wanted is there a mix could you just talk about that break down a little bit we we put

together you know the submission was divided in three different sections you could submit a video in progress video

or a paper paper proposal or a panel proposal and uh uh it's almost all video essays

um there are very very few paper proposals and only one pre-constituted panel so all the rest is uh is video essays which is good you know it's

actually easier because we're gonna you know that's not gonna be a way to divide people now now the the challenge is to fit everything in just two days so I think

we're probably not gonna sleep it's gonna go go on all day and night yeah I think we have a lot of proposals that kind of

going up against like the boundary vote what we might think is a video essay and I think we had this discussion earlier on as a committee um

you know what do we do about works that might be a little like more of a hybrid sort of work not exactly a video essay but maybe more of

like a visual art piece or something like that and I think we ultimately decided to kind of welcome that um and so I think yeah so I think it's really interesting it's going to be

really cool to see all the Innovative all the Innovation that's happening in the field or maybe um inspiration that people can take from these works

and what do you as a committee so I'll address this to both of you what have you talked about in terms of the impact you hope the conference will

have I know that's like a loaded work word and it doesn't necessarily need to have this like that feels like very like a capitalist or something way of of phrasing it like I don't mean it in that

way but I think I would imagine that you must have talked about it and just the act of doing it will have an impact I I know but I'd be curious

um yeah what is the Hope for the kind of the the afterlife of it and and yeah the effect of it and then that this can be it doesn't need to even be concrete but

even just in an abstract General way how have you thought about it I think I can kind of speak on the student perspective because one of of the things that's really cool about this conference is we

actually have student clubs involved as well so we have the Film Production Club being involved we have film discussion Club involved and so some of those

students have engaged in videographic criticism but a lot of them haven't so I think it'll be a really great way to expose current students to the form and

also expose them to the great Community because I think one of the best things about videographic criticism is everyone is so welcoming and it's so Community

Based and to have that to be able to host that sort of vibe at UMass is going to be really really awesome yeah and I'm

so happy about it it's it's crazy you're mentioning this family I'm so grateful to the clubs the clubs that are collaborating with a lot of paperwork

because we are securing a space that only only students can get it's in the new students union

and uh and I'm really count you know the participation of students and but really active participation um there is I don't want to spoil anything

but Johannes is doing something live and for the students so that's gonna be really um something I think that's gonna impact

them I would say that you know I have modest goals in mind um one I hope that the conference will contribute to the visibility and to the

consolidation of this field among among students and faculty in film studies and Beyond early Mass and then I hope it will strengthen our community and really looking forward to

get to know in person some of these people some people that I I feel like they're good friends friends and then I said I never I really never met them in

person after two or three years I will again we've been you know collaborating in projects together and then indeely I hope we are gonna have fun

these are my three goals I can't wait um I will say just in my own experience I was invited to speak up at UMass

in December and you all showed me a great time to stay in the beautiful hotel on campus and

some lovely food and all the rest so I can't wait it's also a beautiful time to be in Western Massachusetts um in September so it's going to be fantastic

um I will also use this as an opportunity to plug and we've mentioned to it in this conversation the interrogating the modes of videographic criticism Symposium

um which you and I Barbara both were part of in February and student that was an online Symposium but students were well integrated into that event as well

um and the students of the organizers and at uh arhus uh University have helped put together a report of that Symposium that was published in the most

recent edition of notes on videographer criticism or as we're recording this the most recent Edition but it's also available at the videoestate.com if you go to the blog section I've uploaded the whole report there and there's a PDF you

can download so again kind of the impact of another event um just just wanted to give that a shout out here um and so Barbara and Emily what if someone's listening to this podcast and

they really want to attend this event or be involved in some way kind of what is the rough timeline going for I know that you had talked about funding and things like that and again that was another benefit to kind of and uh you know a

silver lining to the pandemic thing is that the cost Factor was so you know you just had to hop onto zoom and a lot of things were free but uh could you just walk through kind of what folks should expect timeline wise

and and also I'll share updates on through my channels as well but just for now what is the kind of landscape look like well I think we're gonna have uh

a draft of the program very soon so everybody will see more or less um when they're gonna present um and then we will work with confidence

Services because they will manage all the you know the the part of the website with the registration I feel embarrassed

by the the cost of the hotel I really recommend you know people to to if they can stay at this hotel because it's uh

it's on campus the same building where we're gonna have uh the first dinner and the third dinner so it's really it's really convenient and the rooms are

pretty pretty large so you can really share them um I will actually prepare a dog a Google doc shareable do the Google Docs so if people want to to connect with

other people and share uh Transportation shares a room uh they would find a way to contact other people on this Google doc

it's fantastic we'll look forward to hearing all the updates um I'll of course share them as well Barbara thank you so much for taking the

time uh to join us today I I really appreciate it and also thank you for everything that you do for me for the community for your students and everything it's it's very much

appreciated so thank you you make me cry thank you so much thank you I really had fun and you know I I really appreciate sharing what I'm doing with with other

people and having your attention for two hours what a pleasure I feel like we could have gone for two or three more so

thank you thank you thanks

[Music] thank you [Applause]