Kevin B. Lee

Kevin B. Lee (born 1975) is an American filmmaker and critic. He is considered by many to be one of the most prominent and prolific contributors to the video essay genre. He is also recognised as a pioneer of the Screenlife.
==Biography==
Lee started making short film and documentary in the 2000s with a strong interest in Asian and Asian American topics, such as Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity (2004), an examination of the challenges facing the Sikh community post-9/11. In 2008 he co-founded dGenerate Films, a distributor of independent films from China. Five years later he curated the first retrospective of Chinese independent documentary cinema at the Museum of Modern Art. He also wrote criticism for a range of publications, such as the New York Times, Sight & Sound, Slate (magazine), Indiewire and Mubi (streaming service). In 2011 he was supervising producer for the U.S. nationally televised show Ebert Presents: At the Movies. In 2017 he became the first Artist in Residence of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin.. That same year he was appointed professor for the new field of study Crossmedia Publishing at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. In 2021 he was appointed the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at the Università della Svizzera italiana.
==Video Essays and Desktop Documentary==
In 2007 Lee began to produce video essay on his blog and YouTube channel. Since, he has produced over 360 video essays exploring film and media.. His 2011 video essay The Spielberg Face received extensive attention in the media.
 In 2016 the Austrian Film Museum exhibited a retrospective of Lee's work entitled Aesthetics of Analysis (orig. "Ästhetik der Analyse") which considered the video essay as a substantial cinematic form with its own stylistic dimensions. While pursuing his Masters degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lee produced Transformers: The Premake (2014) which introduced the desktop documentary format. He is considered an authority on the form, lecturing frequently on the topic. From 2011 to early 2017 he was Founding Editor and Chief Video Essayist at Fandor until he resigned in response to a controversial action of the company. He is co-director of Bottled Songs 1-4, a collaborative desktop documentary project with Chloé Galibert-Laîné.
 In 2018 Lee and Galibert-Laîné were awarded the Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Award. , and their video essay Reading // Binging // Benning received the most mentions in the Sight & Sound poll of the year's best video essays. In 2020 Lee co-curated the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist, whose selections were screened at film festivals.. Lee's video essay Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox received the most mentions in the 2020 Sight & Sound video essay poll.
==Select Filmography==
* 2020: Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox
* 2019: Learning Farocki: The Counter Image; Lexicon; Presented
* 2018: Bottled Songs 1-4
* 2018: Reading // Binging // Benning
* 2017: #movieofmylife
* 2016: Right Now Then Wrong
* 2014: Transformers: The Premake
* 2011: The Spielberg Face
* 2004: Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity
Category:American filmmakers
Category:American critics