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. The collection Auto/graphic Screens: Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media and Visual Culture Is the first to interrogate the presence of epistolary forms of writing on screen . It adds the new category of 'Auto/graphic screens' to genres of self-expression and provides a broad perspective upon epistolary forms of writing on-screen, by studying romance dramas and intercultural cinema, essay films, artist's filmmaking and online media.