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.

Teri Higgins is an independent scholar who received her Ph.D. from the University of Otago in 2013. Her thesis, Attention to Detail: Epistolary Discourse and Contemporary Cinema inspired the idea for this edited collection.

Catherine Fowler is Professor in Film and Media at Otago University. She is the author of a BFI Classic on Jeanne Dielman and of a book on Sally Potter. Her essays on artists’ moving images have been published in journals including Screen, Cinema Journal and Framework.

Acknowledgments
Doing (Audio-Visual) Things with Words - From Epistolary Intent to Epistolary Entanglements: an Introduction
Section One: Correspondence
1. (Louise Coopey) Performance and Power: The Letter as an Expression of Masculinity in Game of Thrones
2. (Catherine Fowler) ‘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)
3. (Shiamin Kwa) Dead Letters: Epistolary Hauntology and the Speed of Light in Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)
Section Two: Intimacy
4. (Teri Higgins) Attention to Detail: Epistolary Forms in New Melodrama
5. (Sean Redmond) The Spiritual Intimacies of The Red Hand Files: How Long Will I be Alone?
6. (David Molina) Video Authenticity and Epistolary Self-Expression in Letter to America (Kira Muratova, 1999)
7. (Hito Steyerl) Epistolary Affect and Romance Scams: Letter from an Unknown Woman
Section Three: Self Expression
8. (Rochelle Simmons) Delivering Posthumous Messages: Katherine Mansfield and Letters in the Literary Biopic Leave all Fair (John Reid, 1983)
9. (Jenna Ng) The Interactive Letter: Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short's First Draft of the Revolution
10. (Emre Ça.layan) Epistolary Distance and Reciprocity in José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas’ Filmed Correspondences
11. (Susan Best) Instagram and the Diary: The Case of Amalia Ulman's Excellences & Perfections (2014)
Section Four: Testimony
12. (John Trafton) Civil War Epistolary and the Hollywood War Film
13. (Christine Sprengler) Epistolarity and Decolonial Aesthetics in Carola Grahn's Look Who's Talking (2016)
14. (Sunka Simon) Epistolary Relays in Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (On the Edge of Heaven) (2007)