This month’s video essay recommendations have some genuinely excellent filmmaking in the mix, from a “desktop horror” short to a video that manages to make competitive Tetris riveting. Works about “kid cities” and post-punk music round out this edition. Plus: Is making and/or consuming art effective activism? The answer may surprise you!
“The History of Tetris World Records” by Summoning Salt
The best storytellers make the unlikeliest scenes compelling. Tetris is one of the most elegantly simple of video games, but a community has cohered around it that’s remarkably complex, strategizing even its most granular elements, like the optimal way to tap the control pad. This video might be Summoning Salt’s best yet, visualizing statistics and data in exciting ways. In one scene, a broken record is represented by a pan across a bar graph of high scores, emphasizing how significant it is and making the sense of triumph visceral.
“Art Won’t Save Us from Capitalism” by Lily Alexandre
The title says it all. Alexandre analyzes the efficacy that artistic creation does — and more often doesn’t — have in real-world activism and affecting change. But that cynical-sounding summary belies the hope that Alexandre is trying to convey. What’s more interesting than this first inquiry is the natural follow-up of what art is “good for,” because it reveals the essential flaw of that kind of thinking. She posits that art is worth pursuing and consuming for its own pleasure.
“Kid Cities” by Defunctland
Before I watched this video, I was unfamiliar with the brief boom in theme parks built around letting children simulate the adult world, but now I wish I’d been able to visit one when I was a kid. A child could perform activities imitating jobs ranging from surgery to pizza delivery, and get in-park currency that could be spent on further amusements. Besides the history the video delves into, it explores the way that kids went beyond the parameters of these amusement parks to unwittingly replicate grown-up life even more closely. In interviews and news clips, we see them bemoan the frustrations of tight budgets, invent police corruption, and even figure out how to be a good defense lawyer.
“Sticky” by Maria Hofmann and MUBI
Every year, the streaming service MUBI partners with the FILMADRID International Film Festival to produce a series of video essays. “Sticky” is the best of this year’s crop so far, described by creator Maria Hoffmann as a “horror desktop documentary.” By toggling different browser windows, some of which contain news and videos about the Mediterranean migrant crisis, while others simply show work apps or social media sites, Hofmann evokes the way that atrocity can perversely become part of the mundane background of daily life — just one more element of the constant feed of internet-mediated society.
“Post-Punk, Mark Fisher & Popular Modernism” by CCK Philosophy
Jonas Čeika’s videos about politics and philosophy often explore concepts by figures like Martin Heidegger or Gilles Deleuze through familiar forms of pop culture. His style is austere — it’s simply his calm narration over clips and images, deftly condensing a great deal of information. Here he explains the late Mark Fisher’s ideas about Modernist art by tracing the evolution of post-punk music. Čeika’s videos inspire viewers to read and learn more about his subject — not just to watch them as a substitute for real study.
