When discussing the essay genre, whether in film, video or written form, it is hard to ignore this text. Adorno’s wrote“Der Essay als Form” between 1954 and 1958, and it was originally published in his Noten zur Literatur I.

You can read the complete text online.

Back in 2010 John Bresland (a producer of audio, video and written essays himself) traced the origins of the video essay back to Plutarch, Sei Shōnagon and Montaigne. In his short write-up he also ponders the definition of the format.

Read his text online or download a PDF version.

In his 2015 research note, Mcwhirter looks both back in time and to the future. He sees historical influences in Dziga Vertov’s movies as well as in remix culture.

Download a PDF version of his text.

The online book FILM STUDIES IN MOTION: From Audiovisual Essay 
to Academic Research Video tackles a wide variety of angles. One of those is the historical one: the text frequently touches on (technological and other) forces that have shaped the video essay.

Read the complete book online.

Film scholar Adrian Martin perceives a historical analogy between the video essay and surrealist film. The (surrealist) viewer makes a work of art his or her own by interpreting and re-imagining it in an act of creative spectatorship. In comparable fashion (some) video essays make the object of their study their own by thoughtful manipulation of the original footage and sounds.

Read the article for Fandor online or download a PDF version.

The supercut is arguably the most common format of the video essay, and one with a long pedigree as well. Therefore it deserves its own history, which was expertly written by Tom McCormack in a text for the Museum of the Moving Image. McCormack traces the origins of the supercut to long before the advent of internet video, and finds great examples of celebrity supercuts and other variations that broaden the scope beyond the movie supercut.

Read the article online or download a PDF version.

The supercut is arguably the most common format of the video essay, and one with a long pedigree as well. Therefore it deserves its own history, which was expertly written by Tom McCormack in a text for the Museum of the Moving Image. McCormack traces the origins of the supercut to long before the advent of internet video, and finds great examples of celebrity supercuts and other variations that broaden the scope beyond the movie supercut.

Read the article online or download a PDF version.

The supercut is arguably the most common format of the video essay, and one with a long pedigree as well. Therefore it deserves its own history, which was expertly written by Tom McCormack in a text for the Museum of the Moving Image. McCormack traces the origins of the supercut to long before the advent of internet video, and finds great examples of celebrity supercuts and other variations that broaden the scope beyond the movie supercut.

Read the article online or download a PDF version.

Clint Enns’ overview of algorithmic editing provided historical context and lists (artistic) progenitors of the Jan Bot project (the Dutch EYE museum’s filmmaking bot). This brief historical summary includes many examples of practices that we would now classify as deformative videographic criticism.

Read the whole article online.

In this fascinating introduction to a NECSUS special dossier, Volker Pantenburg makes a valuable addition to the more traditional ways of thinking about the history of the video essay. He adds television to the mix. As he writes, “there are less glamorous sites where an investigation of cinema by its own means was pursued with enthusiasm and inventiveness. Film educational efforts (pursued most insistently in France since the 1960s) and experimentation on television are two of the currents that should play a more important role in the historiography of the video essay. One important center of activity in the Federal Republic of Germany was the film department of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne”.

Read the whole text online.