The Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist

co-curated with Will DiGravio and Cydnii Wilde Harris
Summer 2020

Black Lives Matter. The need to stand for racial justice and against police brutality and systemic inequality is greater than ever. Video essays can play an important role in illuminating these issues, critically examining their representation in film and media, serving as a medium for Black visions and voices to be seen and heard in alliance with the expressions of all other people of color.

To make this potential more visible, we are gathering video essays on these and other topics related to the Black Lives Matter movement, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and subsequent protests. Suggestions for additions to the list are strongly encouraged. The easiest way to send them is to use this form. Alternatively you may email BLMVEPlaylist@gmail.com or DM The Video Essay Podcast on Twitter/Facebook with links to be added to this webpage.

For the purposes of this project, the basic criteria for “video essay” is an audiovisual work that critically reappropriates existing works of film and media. These works can be found in many forms and contexts, such as academic scholarship, journalism, YouTube explainers, video art and social media. We have organized titles within categories to reflect these contexts, while acknowledging that they are non-exclusive to each other. Our call for videos have yielded a wide range of submissions, which we have tried to list comprehensively below. At the same time, we retain an emphasis on video essays as videographic criticism: works that use media to think critically about media.

Through its resourceful use of existing materials to reveal, reframe and redirect their meanings and purposes, videographic criticism offers a powerful mode of media production for those historically excluded from access to dominant media institutions due to racial or economic injustice. This has been especially evident during the Black Lives Matter movement through the use of social media as videographic criticism, as seen in the TikTok, Twitter and Instagram videos listed below. These are just a few examples of how this historical moment has produced exciting new forms of media criticism, which this list endeavors to document.

— Cydnii Wilde Harris. Kevin B. Lee and Will DiGravio, list co-organizers

Public Screenings & Writings On The Playlist

"Video Essays That Address Race, Inequality, and the Movement for Black Lives" by Cydnii Wilde Harris for Hyperallergic

"Analogue, Digital, Computational. Politicized moving images’ reincarnation" by Irina Trocan in Close Up (Vol. 4, No. 1), 2020. Essay begins on page 59.

Selections from the playlist will screen on September 12th as part of the Open City Documentary Festival. The festival is typically held in London but will be virtual this year. The event will also feature a panel co-hosted by Kevin, Cydnii, and Will, who will interview creators. All proceeds will be donated. Learn more and book tickets here.