“How can the language and imagery of film be used to reach beyond language and imagery? How can a more capacious imagination be activated? The unique potential of film exists in its dizzying ability to create other images and other worlds. Film opens us up to the sensuous. When film activates our memories and feelings, it also creates the possibility of other and different ways of being with them. That is what is filmic about film, and this potential is a queer potential. Because what is queer cannot be reduced to what is visible to the camera.”—Ester M. Bergsmark
voice under—the very first book of Swedish film director, artist, and artistic researcher Ester M. Bergsmark—gathers a collection of texts which explore and play with the concept of “voice under” through encounters, with examples from Ester M. Bergsmark’s filmmaking; from other filmmakers and artists (Wu Tsang, Janis Rafa, Chantal Akerman, Wong Kar-Wai, Trinh T. Minh-ha, May Zetterling, Vika Kirchenbauer , Andrei Tarkovsky, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carolee Schneemann, and Derek Jarman et cetera); as well as more theoretical renderings of bodies, gender, trans experiences, desire, violence, and trauma. The intention is to open up a wider sensory register in both the creation and the experience of film by looking closely at, challenging, and playing with different cinematic conventions around truth, authenticity, storytelling, the visual, and the visible.