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Kevin B. Lee

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American filmmaker and critic

Kevin B. Lee is an American filmmaker and critic from Chicago. Lee is named as one of the founders of the Video Essay Genre and the "desktop-documentary"-format. He has been Professor of the Future of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts at the Università della Svizzera italiana and the Locarno Film Festival since 2022.

Biography

Kevin B. Lee studied Film, Video, New Media, animation and Visual Critical Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been working as a video essayist since 2007.

Almost simultaneously, he began writing for various publications such as Senses of Cinema and Chicago Reader. Between 2007 and 2009, Lee collaborated intensively with various other film critics from New York City, but also with film theorists such as Kristin Thompson and Paolo Cherchi Usai. This led to greater publicity regarding his videographic works, which he published on Youtube. He produced video essays for Focus Features, among others.

He brought the desktop documentary format to broader public attention with his 2014 documentary Transformers: The Premake.

In 2017, Lee became the first artist in residence of the Harun-Farocki-Institute in Berlin. In the same year, he was appointed Professor of Cross media publishing at the Merz Akademie. Since 2022 he has been Professor for the Future of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts at the Università della Svizzera italiana and the Locarno Film Festival.

He previously taught film and media studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He was founding editor and senior video essayist at Fandor and executive producer of the nationally televised programme Ebert Presents: At the Movies.

Selected filmography

  • 2002: Banana (short film)
  • 2003: On Guard (short film)
  • 2004: Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity (short film)
  • 2012: Simple Expressions of Absolute Values (video)
  • 2013: Lasting Elements on the Last Horizon (video)
  • 2014: Transformers: the Premake (video)
  • 2014-2016: Fandor
  • 2020: Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox (short film)
  • 2020: Bottled Songs 1-4 (film)
  • 2022: Piazza Futura (Postcard from the Future) (short film)

References

  1. Seitz, Matt Zoller (13 January 2009). "Copy Rites: YouTube vs. Kevin B. Lee". Slant Magazine.
  2. "MFA Student Curates Art Institute Collection Online | School of the Art Institute of Chicago". Saic.edu.
  3. "The Art Institute video collection is on YouTube". Chicago Tribune. 26 December 2014.
  4. "The best video essays of 2023". BFI. 19 December 2023.
  5. "The Videographic Essay: In Dialogue: Eric Faden and Kevin B. Lee". The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy.
  6. ^ "Pioneer of the 'desktop documentary' to speak about his craft | Yale News". Yale.edu. 28 March 2018.
  7. Buckley, Cara (16 June 2014). "Transforming Phone Video Into Publicity and a Film". The New York Times.
  8. "Der Video-Essayist Kevin B. Lee: Medienkritik mit Transformers". Tagesspiegel (in German). ISSN 1865-2263.
  9. "Kevin B. Lee". Merz Akademie.
  10. "The Locarno Film Festival with USI Università della Svizzera italiana: Kevin B. Lee (USA) is to be the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts". Locarno Film Festival.
  11. "Lee, Kevin Ben". Università della Svizzera italiana.
  12. Haglund, David (14 December 2011). "Watch This Brilliant Video Essay About the "Spielberg Face"". Slate.
  13. "A symphony of voices". RogerEbert.com. 14 December 2012.
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