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While cinema is a photographic art, many subjects and experiences fail to come across on film in the same way that we experience them in life, if they can be reproduced at all. Issue 7 is organized around this very theme of “the unfilmable,” which contributing editor Paolo Cherchi Usai explores in an introductory feature. UFOs, stuntwork, hypnosis, microscopic imaging, and speculative technologies of the future—all arise in these pages. A series of conceptual film scripts by Yoko Ono challenge the reader to make movies in their own imaginations; Guy Maddin shares stunning collages for a film of torrid psychosexual impossibility, and, in an era- and genre-spanning essay, Bilge Ebiri finds room to dream between film frames. Notions of “unfilmability” also prompt ethical questions: filmmaker Ing K recounts (and illustrates) her experiences facing censorship in Thailand. Elsewhere, an archivist working with Indigenous communities in Australia discusses the preservation of culturally sensitive anthropological films that still hold historical value. In original photography, artist-filmmaker Deborah Stratman shows us how an excess of light can transform an image (look no further than the magazine’s cover). Plus, in a bound insert, author Mark Leyner shares a novelistic treatment for a film that was never made, 8W, a singular and wildly funny prose fantasia. Kevin Jerome Everson contributes the next entry in our “Things a Filmmaker Should Know” series, and a scrapbook-esque feature on the preservation work undertaken by the Japanese Paper Film Project shows the radically different forms and formats that cinema can take.
Pigment-Dispersion Syndrome (Jennifer Reeves, 2022).
Things a Filmmaker Should Know by Kevin Jerome Everson
Recycling Cinema: The Japanese Paper Film Project by Eric Faden
Exploring the rich history of a fragile type of film, made from paper, and the innovative efforts to revive this idiosyncratic format for contemporary audiences.
The Unfilmable: The Cinema That Never Was, or Should Have Been by Paolo Cherchi Usai
A bird’s eye view of what cameras cannot see.
A Walk in the Snow: Yoko Ono’s Film Scripts by Ara Osterweil
Five conceptual scenarios for film projects peppered throughout the issue liberate us from the narrative and material world.
The Secret and the Sacred a conversation between Paolo Cherchi Usai and Tasha James
What should be done with cultural sensitive moving images that still hold historical value?
Censorship Must Die by Ing K.
A time capsule of a filmmaker’s lifelong struggle against the censors, and a missive to others facing similar odds.
Dreams Per Second: A History of the Frame Rate by Bilge Ebiri
On cinema’s ability to conjure reality at a paradoxical remove.
Achieving the Impossible with statements by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, Doug Milsome, Kenji Tanigaki, and Zhu Rikun
Four practitioners describe the inventive ways they’ve overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges during production.
The Finder and the Moon: Real UFOs on Film by Mark Pilkington
What can footage from the UFO world tell us about the undying cultural phenomenon and our expectations for it?
The Abyss of Impossibility & 8W by Mark Leyner
A novelist kidnaps his own treatment for a film that was never made.
The Consolation of von Stroheim (Guy Maddin, 2024).
New Bodies for the Old! (or, The Squid Ink Triangle) by Guy Maddin
Plotting a dream project, the filmmaker turns to collage in order to rationalize the irrational and stage the impossible.
The Trip (Roger Corman, 1967).
Brain Movies by Sophia Satchell-Baeza; with statements by Basma Al-Sharif, Shezad Dawood, and Jennifer Reeves
You can't get a Bolex inside your brain, but the cinema has found inventive ways to portray perception.
Near, Far, Wherever You Are by Sonia Shechet Epstein; with illustrations by Jinhwa Jang
Zoom in and out and backward and forward through time in this visual exploration of inner and outer space.
Whiteouts photographs and text by Deborah Stratman
The artist-filmmaker explores how an excess of light can transform an image.
ONLINE SUPPLEMENTS
Bye Bye Tiberias (Lina Soualem, 2023).
Choreographing the Real: A Conversation with Kenji Tanigaki by Jonah Jeng
The veteran fight choreographer discusses his approach to action design ahead of his latest film’s premiere in Toronto.
One Meter below Our Gaze: The Bulgarian Children’s Cinema by Yoana Pavlova
To pass the scrutiny of censors, filmmakers behind the Iron Curtain adapted their discontent into timeless entertainment for the whole family.
The Camera of the Dispossessed: Found Footage and the Survival of Memory by Yasmina Price
Finding its form in debris and outtakes, found-footage film presents a parallel to the plight of the oppressed.