Kevin B. Lee

Bottled Songs is an ongoing media project depicting strategies for making sense of online terrorist propaganda. Filmmakers and media researchers Chloé Galibert-Laîné and Kevin B. Lee compose letters addressed to each other, narrating their encounters with videos originating from the terrorist group the Islamic State (ISIS). They use a desktop documentary approach to trace and record their investigations playing directly upon their computer screens.

In this deeply personal video diary, a young researcher tries to make sense of her fascination for the film "The Pain of Others" by Penny Lane. A deep dive into the discomforting world of YouTube and online conspiracies, that challenges traditional notions of what documentary cinema is, or should be.

“The film [Right Now Then Wrong] is really fascinating — it is basically the same story told twice, back to back, and the thing I really wanted to know is how the first version of the story compares to the second. If I took the same scene from both versions and played them at the same time, what could I find out? That was a wonderful exercise in critical viewing and side-by side analysis, but then I started to get a bit self-conscious: “Oh, maybe the audience doesn’t want to see this footage.” So, I thought maybe I can offer an alternative experience — if they don’t want to be spoiled, I can tell a story inspired by the film. This idea of having two video essays playing a the same time on different halves of the screen, the top and the bottom, and then at the beginning just instructing the audience that they can choose which one they want to see, they can simply use their hands to block the part of the screen they don’t want to see.

In this video I share my experience as the first Resident of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin during the winter of 2016-2017. Produced for the Goethe Institute.

Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth installment of the Transformers movie franchise directed by Michael Bay, will be released June 27 2014. But on YouTube one can already access an immense trove of production footage recorded by amateurs in locations where the film was shot, such as Utah, Texas, Detroit, Chicago, Hong Kong and mainland China. Transformers: the Premake turns 355 YouTube videos into a critical investigation of the global big budget film industry, amateur video making, and the political economy of images.

Through desktop documentary and forensics, this work explores how images of Medusa of Hatra, ISIS propaganda, and digital archives influence reality and memory while examining violence and witness.

A video essay by Chloé Galibert-Laîné and Kevin B. Lee. Commissioned by Dana Linssen and Jan Pieter Ekker for Critics Choice V: Absence, 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Special thanks to Bero Beyer. Dedicated to the film I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS by Radu Jude.

In a world bedazzled by intractable images, do we need the essay film now more than ever? Kevin B. Lee weighs up this distinctively self-aware, searching form of cinema through both video and text.

A video essay collaboration on Jacques Rivette's Out 1, produced by Kevin B. Lee using messages received by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Five decades of Harun Farocki's film and video material are transformed into an audiovisual vocabulary, teaching key Farockian concepts from A to Z. This video essay takes inspiration from Farocki's lifelong fascination with the teaching functions of film and media. Commissioned by the Goethe-Institut, a leading German-language educator in the world.

How much can you see of a movie you can't see? A speculative video essay on the film READERS by James Benning.

‘Kevin’s piece on his childhood experiences with the film Platoon are an example of the very power of cinema to shape our relationship with the world, and the world’s relationship with us … an experience of childhood trauma so visceral, that I haven’t just gained new insight on the war epic itself.’ (Cidnii Wilde Harris)

On the Chicago filmmaker's exuberant approach to the medium. As Lori says, 'You may never find an answer, because playing is the best part.'

A portrait of the influential American film critic.

Premiered at the 2017 Locarno International Film Festival.

Kevin investigates the online traces of a British news reporter who was kidnapped and appeared in several Islamic State propaganda videos.

This video presents Chapters 3 and 4 from the series. « The Spokesman » (aka « A Guide to be driven ») investigates the online traces of John Cantlie, a British news reporter who was kidnapped and appeared in several Islamic State's propaganda videos. « My Crush was a Superstar » tracks a French ISIS fighter, Abu Abdallah Guitone, through a trail of messages, videos and postings to uncover his existence in both social media and reality. This leads to an uncomfortable first-person exploration of the gender dynamics behind ISIS recruitment strategies.

Two researchers investigate the dissemination of propaganda created by the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State and contemplate the media’s role in spreading this message. Exchanging video letters recorded from their computer desktops, the researchers share their thoughts and fears as they each dissect pieces of media produced by ISIS in 2014 that are still available online today.

The mind process behind the film, Transformers the Premake, explained by Kevin B Lee himself.

The video essay is expanding our notions of film criticism and appreciation. But do these essays offer a key to let us out—or lock us in?