Cinewriting the self: The letter-film as self-portrait

Like the written letter, a first-person genre with strong autobiographical overtones, the letter-film shares many features of the self-portrait and, indeed, often contains one. The letter is a confessional genre that encourages intimacy and disclosure, self-description and self-designation. As a dialogical form, however, the letter invites a reply; whether one is received or not, the epistolary mode always encourages a relational portrait of the self. Focusing on the special case of epistolary exchanges between filmmakers - including Shūji Terayama and Shuntarō Tanikawa, Joseph Morder and Alain Cavalier, Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin, José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas - this chapter explores the recurrent features of these intimate, semi-private works, and argues that filmed correspondences produce a particular form of self-portraiture. In letter-films, directors produce images of themselves as artists who film, and create epistolary self-portraits that are at once collaborative, cumulative, incremental and open-ended.