In Quiet Pictures, Sarah Artt argues that silence in film is vitally important, especially to our understanding of women’s and femme-presenting people’s experiences. Artt explores silence through the work of four filmmakers–Joanna Hogg, Lynne Ramsay, Céline Sciamma, and Lucile Hadžhalilovic–who have been hitherto critically undervalued, a state of affairs that this book triumphantly corrects. Through close analysis of a range of their films, Artt helps us to understand how silence can work as erasure, as unwitting complicity, as resistance, and in many other ways–all of which reveal resoundingly how silence relates to power. Most thrillingly, silence, in Artt’s assessment, “becomes a rich space of potential,” for redefining gender, identity, and how people relate to one another. A terrific book.
