The Edges of Cinema

Essays on Twenty-First Century Film Culture

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by Erika Balsom

Type

Essays

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

21st century, documentary, experimental, auteur cinema, animation, sociology

Publishing date

2026 (September 08, 2026)

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 352 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-231-22132-0

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Book Presentation:
Recent years have seen a panic over the future of mainstream film. Yet film culture is at its most vital on the margins, where the moving image meets visual art, documentary brushes up against experimentalism, and curators are reshaping established histories. Bringing together a decade of criticism, The Edges of Cinema roams across an array of styles to take account of how some of the most important contemporary filmmakers are engaging the world.

Erika Balsom―a leading scholar and critic―explores subjects ranging from computer-generated animation to the effects of digitization, and from the status of observational cinema to the longest of long takes. She takes a bold stand in debates on the “female gaze” and examines how filmmakers address issues concerning climate change, race, gender, violence, and technology. Balsom considers works at the intersection of documentary, experimental film, and auteur cinema by directors such as Peggy Ahwesh, James Benning, Aria Dean, Mati Diop, Harun Farocki, Albert Serra, Brett Story, Tsai Ming-liang, and Wang Bing. Challenging the caricature of experimental film as “difficult,” this wide-ranging and engaging book makes a case for the politics, provocations, and pleasures of a less ordinary cinema.

About the Author:
Erika Balsom is a reader in film and media studies at King’s College London. She is the author of five books, including TEN SKIES (2021) and After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (Columbia, 2017).

Press Reviews:
"One of the most promising titles due this summer." ― Criterion Current

"To read an essay―of any length, on any topic―by Erika Balsom is to be transformed, enlightened, delighted. In this extraordinary collection, there is another kind of edge to consider: that of Balsom’s writing, which is unfailingly incisive, vigorous, sharp as a blade." -- Melissa Anderson, author of The Hunger: Film Writing, 2012–2024

"Precious few scholars have engaged with contemporary film culture as intimately and perceptively as Erika Balsom. Her criticism is essential reading for understanding how technology, feminism, and the legacy of the avant-garde continue to interact and evolve in twenty-first-century cinema." -- Ed Halter, founder and director of Light Industry

"Reading Erika Balsom’s essays, one encounters a rare and thrilling intelligence at work. Here is a critic who has looked closer, thought harder, and found more precise words than most others can. Doubling as a survey of today’s most essential practitioners of moving-image art, this collection makes a persuasive case for cinema as a vital art form in the twenty-first century." -- Dennis Lim, artistic director of the New York Film Festival

See the publisher website: Columbia University Press