Video Essay Atelier: Spatial Practices of the Video Essay
The theme of the spring 2025 edition of the Video Essay Atelier, Spatial Practices of the Video Essay, explores the relationship between audiovisual and spatial practices. In collaboration with the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, students developed video essays designed for exhibition in spatial environments, reflecting on how moving images can shape, and be shaped by, the spaces in which they are experienced. Taught by Prof. Kevin B. Lee and doctoral researcher Silvia Cipelletti at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (AAM), the course connects the analytical and creative processes of video essay production with the architectural sensibilities of the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio.
The final project “Key Words for Key Films”, presents a “cinematic lexicon” combining words with films from the 2020s to form a moving glossary of our era. The works were exhibited at the Museo in summer 2025.
Additionally, students produced videographic experiments exploring cinema’s shifting materialities. The exercise “AI movie remakes” uses generative AI tools to creatively transform and interrogate existing films. “DVDs, Rematerialized”explore DVDs not just as containers of films, but as tactile relics of a bygone media culture.
Course taught by Prof. Kevin B. Lee and PhD researcher Silvia Cipelletti at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio.
AI Movie Remakes
Caught by the Tides
by Wieke Campagne, Wendy Lin, Shawn Hao Liu
Dahomey
by Flavia Zorrilla and Paul Magnin
The Lighthouse
by David Dall’Agnese and Luca Rinaldi
Anora. AI Remake
by Joanna Barbachowska
DVDs Rematerialized
Paris, Texas
by Irina Pandele and Chido Tashayawedu
The Passenger
by Sarah Daebritz and Andrej Kukic
Schlesisches Tor
by Flavia Mazzarino
Ninotchka
by Shawn Hao Liu
Jeanne Dielman By Wieke Campagne
by Wieke Campagne
Rear Window
by Wendy Lin