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Amber Husain

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, The Believer, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. She is the author of Replace Me, to be published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.



Articles Available Online


Slouching Towards Death

Book Review

July 2021

Amber Husain

Book Review

July 2021

In January, a preview excerpt in The New Yorker of Rachel Kushner’s essay collection The Hard Crowd (2021) warned us that this might turn...

Book Review

August 2020

Natasha Stagg’s ‘Sleeveless’

Amber Husain

Book Review

August 2020

‘The thong is centimetres closer to areas of arousal,’ writes Natasha Stagg in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York,...

In his 1992 essay ‘In Search of the Centaur’, the writer and critic Phillip Lopate described the essay-film as ‘a cinematic genre that barely exists’ He had a point: essay-films were scarce But Lopate made them seem even rarer than they were by his self-confessed fastidiousness as to what may rightly be called an essay-film, arguing that he finds the term, as others use it, too inclusive By his own admission, he sets the bar high, and recognises the difficulty of making ‘his idea of’ an essay-film But what is that?   All are agreed that the essay-film is a variant of documentary It uses original or existing footage, or both, in combination with a narrative voice that may be spoken or takes the shape of intertitles Cross-examination of the visual material by the voice and vice-versa is the distinguishing mark of the essay-film Like the written essay, it pursues a line of argument, a thought or idea; tests it, tries it on for size The essay-film interests itself in this process; is as much concerned with the manner of finding out as with the thing discovered – if anything is discovered Where the conventional documentary tilts at detachment or fashions its illusion, the essay-film has no business with impartiality: the spectator is made the film-maker’s familiar, and is given partial responsibility for fleshing out the interface between commentary and image   Lopate cannot conceive of an essay-film that does not deploy text in some form or other (written or spoken) Others ardently waive the genre’s debt to its literary senior These latter are adamant that the essay-film has outgrown its writerly heredity, that images may interrogate images as well as any words might The question with which Lopate closes his seminal essay is predicated on the adverse persuasion that text and picture must play equal part in the essay-film: ‘Will there ever be a way to join word and image together on screen so that they accurately reflect their initial participation in the arrival of a thought, instead of merely seeming mechanically linked, with one predominating over or fetched to illustrate the other?’   Lopate’s essay was by no means the last word

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall,...

On Having No Skin: Nan Goldin’s Sirens

Art Review

January 2020

Amber Husain

Art Review

January 2020

The feeling of drug-induced euphoria could be strips of gauze between beautiful fingers. Or a silver slinky sent down a torso by its own...
In Defence of Dead Women

Essay

November 2018

Amber Husain

Essay

November 2018

The memorial for the artist was as inconclusive as her work, or anybody’s life. Organised haphazardly on Facebook by one of her old friends,...

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fiction

Issue No. 2

The Surrealist Section of the Harry Ransom Center

Diego Trelles Paz

TR. Janet Hendrickson

fiction

Issue No. 2

To Enrique Fierro and Ida Vitale—   Just like you, muchachos, I didn’t believe in ghosts, and if I’d...

fiction

January 2015

Shishosetsu...

Minae Mizumura

TR. Juliet Winters Carpenter

fiction

January 2015

This is an excerpt from the novel published in Japanese as Shishosetsu from left to right (私小説 from left...

feature

October 2012

Film: Palestinian Airlines

Eddie Wrey

feature

October 2012

    Palestinian Airlines Produced and Directed by Eddie Wrey Co-produced and translated by Max Wrey Co-edited by Rye...

 

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