Video Essays

Video Essays

A collection of films that bring literature, personal journalism, and spoken word to the moving image and video. Fiction, nonfiction, some somber, others more comedic, all come to their own realizations and conclusions. Listen to and watch these, VIDEO ESSAYS. NoBudge Collection #005.

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Video Essays
  • Asian Cinema Club

    Two friends start a t-shirt company as a ruse to engage their friends into joining their club. Hannah Marianetti and James Yu direct “Asian Cinema Club,” a docu-fictional reflection on Asian identity and making/appreciating art. Through an alternating GoPro-forehead POV, we casually follow Hannah...

  • shadow work

    An archival exploration of a St. Louis housing project, Pruitt–Igoe, that tends to the dark spaces concealed in a collective past. Lorenzo Bradford’s “shadow work” is an experimental archival documentary where awashed materials are recycled and used to examine Black life and dispossession. Broken...

  • ecologics

    A young narrator fixates on old office buildings and discarded ways of life, experiencing some form of nostalgia for something they never experienced. Lauren Koo directs “ecologics,” an experimental video poem that explores the liminal spaces and dissonances of human work life, technological adva...

  • Video Essays - Conversations with Filmmakers

  • How to Live with Regret

    The new satirical video tutorial from filmmaker John Wilson explores the world of regrets, both big and small. A bad haircut or a broken phone may not seem like a huge deal but it may cause "cascading effects that lead to long-term regret." With his signature halting voice-over, Wilson weaves in ...

  • An Independent Movie About A Young Artist

    A young artist struggles to make a movie about a young artist who struggles to make a movie. Zenzelé Soa-Clarke directs and stars in “An Independent Movie About a Young Artist,” a meta breakdown on the tropes of slice-of-life indie filmmaking (“mumblecore, character driven, all the shit”), and an...

  • Cup of Gold

    Cup of Gold meanders through sunlit autumn days while the narrator attempts to transmit the mysterious forces of nature that enchant her. Film, narration & music by Eva Knowles.

  • I Wish There Was a Guy Term for I Love You

    In this collection of anonymous stories shared by queer men, a connection is drawn between queer life and nature. “I Wish There Was a Guy Term for I Love You,” directed by Andy Motz, is an experimental documentary narrated with tales of first time flings and intimate meet-ups framed as a series o...

  • Time Code

    Commissioned to make a short profile of an emerging pop star, a 3-person American film crew spends six days in Asia searching for their subject. Brook Linder directs “Time Code,” a hyperkinetic meta narrative that coheres improbably around the creation of a piece of glossy online content in 2016....

  • The Great Outdoors

    A film poem about a love of the outdoors that reflects on feeling like an outsider at a national park. (“I never really felt like it was a place for people like us”). Filmed at the Lake District in the UK, “The Great Outdoors,” directed by Tayler Prince-Fraser, delivers stylish visuals and lively...

  • Lucky Strike

    A poetic rumination on a former relationship told through the locations it took place in New York City, part personal reflection, part film essay. “Lucky Strike,” directed by Benjamin Ades, frames its meditations on love and film with memories of the romance and philosophical musings on fate. Hav...

  • Matter

    A self-portrait about a young woman in L.A. moving between houses that don’t feel like home. Lauren Rothery directs “Matter,” a stylish autobiography that begins in sadness & confusion, and searches for a change of heart. A posh older gentleman narrates her inner thoughts — a melange of dislikes ...

  • Five Secrets to Mom

    A teenager confesses five secrets to their mother on an anonymous online forum. Presented entirely as a screen capture of an old desktop computer, “Five Secrets to Mom,” by director Charles Dillon Ward, applies rudimentary digital tools in service of a modern teen admission, and the film alternat...

  • Diary

    A poetic essay film portraying Baltimore in a moment of reckoning, shown uniquely through humble observations and personal recollections. “Diary,” directed by Gillian Waldo, tracks the summer of 2020 with its nationwide cataclysms revolving around Covid-19 and police brutality. The film is presen...

  • What I Had to Leave Behind

    In this stylized personal essay, a renter says goodbye to their apartment. “What I Had to Leave Behind,” directed by Sean David Christensen, is a lovely ode to moving out, built around a self-deprecating voiceover and jazzy score. Memories spring to mind about every corner of the apartment — the ...

  • Sandy

    “Sandy” journeys through a New Jersey beachside town with no sense of the past as sea levels rise. Our take: This personal essay film by Dylan Hansen-Fliedner is a contemplative survey of family history, climate change, Hollywood hypocrisy, and our culture’s unwillingness to change its ways. Visu...

  • This Is Alice

    This stylish super 8mm film poem by director Lauren Rothery is a lovely, wistful portrait of Alice, her joys, anxieties, the way she looks when she’s a little drunk. A French-speaking narrator introduces us to the woman as we watch simple moments throughout her day, the voice remarks on her feeli...

  • Reflections at 29

    A personal essay film about a man who uprooted his life in India to move to the U.S. in pursuit of making films. “Reflections at 29,” directed by Tanmaya Shekhar, merges old home videos and photos with newly shot footage, narrated by Shekhar himself in vulnerable musings about the status of his e...

  • How to Raise a Black Boy

    During a rocky but enlightened childhood, a group of kids disappear and find themselves on a fantastical journey to break the curses of black boyhood. Justice Jamal Jones directs “How To Raise a Black Boy,” an imaginative, free-spirited fairytale about love, secrets, and breaking away. After the ...

  • Coconut

    To his mother's homeland of Jamaica, a young man returns to pay last respects to the grandmother he called Two Mommy. “Coconut,” directed by Jard Lerebours, is a self-proclaimed “public declaration of love,” an experimental documentary and poetic remembrance of a matriarch and caretaker. Shot on ...