Category Archives: The Film Essay

This is the illusion of cinema: just as things appear, as we are about grasp them, they disappear. — Lesley Stern, DEAD AND ALIVE This piece is inspired by Peter Wollen’s “An Alphabet of Cinema.” The alphabet is a form … Continue reading →

Is it possible people come to us—I do not here aspire exactly to a metaphysical argument, and certainly not one about faith or god, but rather just a simple, spiritual question—and then go away from us? — Ross Gay, THE … Continue reading →

I am fascinated by the movement on, and of, the screen, that movement which is something like the leaving and swelling of the sea (though I have not yet been to the sea): and which is also something like the … Continue reading →

[T]he sacrificial victim must send up long-drawn-out, mournful, pathetic cries, making the hearer feel the unutterable loneliness of existence. Thereupon my joy of life, blazing up from some secret place deep within me, would finally give its own shout of … Continue reading →

I am fascinated by the movement on, and of, the screen, that movement which is something like the heaving and swelling of the sea… — James Baldwin, “Congo Square” Toni gets close, pressing her face against the window in the door. … Continue reading →

C is for Cinema, but that is admittedly too broad of a subject, so I will narrow it down to the time in which, for most, cinephilia begins: childhood. I am around five years old. I am with my sister, … Continue reading →

E is for encounter, and exchange, which are one and the same. E is also for “eyes,” those objects through which our encounters and exchanges take place: eyes through screens, eyes glancing toward cameras, eyes deliberately not glancing toward cameras, … Continue reading →

Collectively Composed by Victor Bowman-Rivera, Linh Ngoc Bui, Andrenae Jones, Annie Martin, Quillan Qian, Anniyah Rawlins, and Kailyn Shepherd With thanks to Professor Amelie Hastie for organizing our contributions to this Preface Let us assume, to begin with, that films … Continue reading →