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The essay argues that there exists within the history of cinema and video art a little-known sub-history of attempts to reimagine critical writing through a form of on-screen typography that troubles the generally strict boundary between the visual and legible; this reimagining is also evident through explicit renderings of image manipulation in which we see the filmmaker – his or her body, shadow or hands – in association with his or her materials; and it is apparent in films and videos in which the filmmaker’s voice is laid over the images, and the critique is heard rather than seen. In each of these gestures, cinema aligns with the impulse of critical writing and, in the process, proposes new forms of humanistic inquiry which I have dubbed the "cinematic humanities."