This month, a range of video essays about tech-related subjects and history.

"Filming in a kitchen is like working with a ballet or theater company," the filmmaker told Hyperallergic in an interview for the release of his new film Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros.

This month, we feature videos on criticism, artificial intelligence, social media, and more.

Subject’s premise is novel and has potential, but for all the film’s discussion of ethics, it has its own failings.

Pictures of Ghosts is concerned not just with how cinema makes memory tangible, but also how we historically have interacted with it. 

The festival’s Currents program deserves praise for its selection of risk-taking films.

With so many to sort through, here are some recommendations for the best recent video essays to check out.

The Boy and the Heron is an old man’s look back at a life spent crafting intricate worlds, now offering the tools to do so to the next generation.

In The Pigeon Tunnel, documentarian Errol Morris attempts to suss out what makes the famed spy novelist tick.

Michal Weits's Blue Box, in which she grapples with her great-grandfather's role in the mass displacement of Palestinians, doesn't go quite far enough.

Guzmán sits with Hyperallergic for a conversation about the lost promise of Salvador Allende’s presidency, enduring personal and collective trauma, and the continued possibility for a new revolution.

The Eternal Memory draws parallels between a Chilean couple’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and their country’s broader struggle to maintain its history.

For all the character that the city has lost to gentrification, How To with John Wilson demonstrates how much delightful strangeness can still be found here.

Elizabeth Lennard, director of the 1985 documentary Tokyo Melody about the famed experimental musician, discusses the film and her memories of Sakamoto.

With Feedback, Part 2, Anthology Film Archives presents experimental films that specifically bend image, sound, or both back in on themselves.

A new documentary adds nothing to the historical record or collective conversation on Lee, but does work to bolster the man’s mythology.

The Thai director discusses his dreamlike films in a conversation with Hyperallergic ahead of his career retrospective in New York City.

Director Sam Green wants viewers to fully engage their ears in a sonic journey of 32 soundscapes.

A founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective, Akomfrah has explored Black life in Britain and beyond through acute observational films.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman captures Haruki Murakami’s combination of low-key magical realism, sexual neurosis, and loneliness.

A host of documentaries exemplify ND/NF's unconventional programming philosophy.

A Common Sequence muses on the different ways that humans assess, categorize, understand, and often exploit the natural world.

The Stroll is not just a chronicle of trans life and activism in the 1980s and ’90s, but also of urban “renewal” in the 21st century.

In myriad ways, coming as it does in January, Sundance sets the stage for US cinema through the rest of the year.

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) is a reasonably informative, if rather dry, look at a subject with much more potential for exploration.

Rachel Lears’s new film To the End is optimistic, perhaps to a fault.

The director sat with Hyperallergic for a conversation about the making of his new film The Velvet Underground.

EO’s universe seems a godless one; there’s no philosophical reason for the pain that human and nonhuman animals endure.

The subject matter of The Super 8 Years could not be more mundane, but the Nobel Prize-winning memoirist’s musings elevate it to something far more compelling.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed forcefully posits multiple parallels between the world Nan Goldin grew up in and the one she fights in today.

Tsai’s style is the opposite of boring; in demanding the viewer’s attention, he allows for incredible moments of human connection and discovery.

Though not well known outside of Japan, Tsuchimoto honed an observational style of filmmaking similar to the cinema verité movement in the US and Europe, but years earlier.

With his latest film, Jafar Panahi suggests that cinema might be a great art worth fighting for, but it may not be able to save anyone.

The Computer Accent follows the pop-dance band YACHT as they use AI to help compose their 2019 album Chain Tripping.

Chinatown's venerated Downtown Community Television Center is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a state-of-the-art cinema and community hub.

Turning an “unfilmable” book into a film is one thing; making it good is another.

Patricio Guzmán combines reflection on the past, observation of the present, and hope for the future into an expansive vision of all the ideas he’s explored in his work.

With Moonage Daydream, director Brett Morgen sought to let Bowie’s music and philosophy hit in a whole new way, immersing audiences in an IMAX experience.

Courtney Stephens's documentary on women's travels from the 1920s to '50s presents not just personal glimpses into daily life a century ago but also documents of colonialism.

From her personal writings, along with fragments of her work and recollections of friends and family, Loving Highsmith constructs a view of the author that is more intimate than most.

The exhibition Porno Chic to Sex Positivity at the Museum of Sex traces how once-verboten depictions of sex became gradually acceptable in pop culture.

Owen Kline’s directorial debut follows a privileged teenage artist who decides to impose some grittiness on his life to improve his work.

William Klein: YES, a career retrospective at the International Center of Photography, is good for aficionados and neophytes alike.

Despite faithfully recreating the story of the beloved comic book series, the TV show lacks the verve of the original.

As the Uru-eu-wau-wau face continued incursion by Brazilian farmers, they take an active role in this documentary about them.

Arriving amid increased anti-Asian racism and continuing discourse about the inhumanity of its prison system, this documentary is a strong historical gut punch.

Metrograph’s series The Process features films that were either directed by Robert M. Young or made with the help of Irving Young’s postproduction facility.

Featuring a delicate lead performance by Christine Froseth, this is a smart, sometimes purposefully discomfiting comedy about taking control of one’s sexuality.

At first, simply watching people read In Search of Lost Time might seem dull; by the end, you'll be itching to read or reread it yourself.

Isabel Castro’s Mija follows two daughters of immigrants breaking into the music business.