Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media and the Visual Arts

Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media and the Visual Arts

This collection departs from the observation that online forms of communication—the email, blog, text message, tweet—are actually haunted by old epistolary forms: the letter and the diary. By examining the omnipresence of writing across a variety of media, the collection adds the category of Epistolary Screens to genres of self-expression, both literary (letters, diaries, auto-biographies) and screenic (romance dramas, intercultural cinema, essay films, artists’ videos and online media). The category Epistolary encapsulates an increasingly paradoxical relation between writing and the self: first, it describes selves that are written in graphic detail via letters, diaries, blogs, texts, emails and tweets; second, it acknowledges that absence complicates communication, bringing people together in an entangled rather than ordered way. The collection concerns itself with the changing visual/textual texture of screen media and examines what is at stake for our understanding of self-expression when it takes Epistolary forms.
  • Cover
  • Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgements
  • Doing (Audio-Visual) Things with Words – From Epistolary Intent to Epistolary Entanglements: An Introduction
    • Teri Higgins and Catherine Fowler
  • 1. Performance and Power: The Letter as an Expression of Masculinity in Game of Thrones
    • Louise Coopey
  • 2. ‘My dearest little girl, I just got your letter and I hope that you will continue to write to me often’
    • Epistolary Listening in News from Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
      • Catherine Fowler
  • 3. Dead Letters
    • Epistolary Hauntology and the Speed of Light in Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)
      • Shiamin Kwa
  • 4. Attention to Detail: Epistolary Forms in New Melodrama
    • Teri Higgins
  • 5. The Spiritual Intimacies of The Red Hand Files: How Long Will I Be Alone?
    • Sean Redmond
  • 6. Video Authenticity and Epistolary Self-Expression in Letter to America (Kira Muratova, 1999)
    • David G. Molina
  • 7. Epistolary Affect and Romance Scams: Letter from an Unknown Woman
    • Hito Steyerl
  • 8. Delivering Posthumous Messages: Katherine Mansfield and Letters in the Literary Biopic Leave All Fair (John Reid, 1985)
    • Rochelle Simmons
  • 9. The Interactive Letter: Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution
    • Jenna Ng
  • 10. Epistolary Distance and Reciprocity in José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas’s Filmed Correspondences
    • Emre Çağlayan
  • 11. Instagram and the Diary: The Case of Amalia Ulman’s Excellences & Perfections (2014)
    • Susan Best
  • 12. Civil War Epistolary and the Hollywood War Film
    • John Trafton
  • 13. Epistolarity and Decolonial Aesthetics in Carola Grahn’s Look Who’s Talking (2016)
    • Christine Sprengler
  • 14. Epistolary Relays in Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (On the Other Side/On the Edge of Heaven) (2007)
    • Sunka Simon
  • Index