Documented Nostalgia in Orion Carloto’s “Film for Her”

With encapsulating dream-like bliss and a sense of longing and reminiscing, Orion Carloto’s Film for Her beautifully executed all of this and everything in between. After only being a few pages deep, I fell in love with her words, style, and overall appealing lust for life in this piece of art. 

The book itself has a very captivating appearance with its textured hardcover and neutral green lettering. The pages and layout felt very sleek and comforting while I read it and I couldn’t put it down. On the back of the cover, it states that it is a “Storybook of people, places, and memories captured on film” and it was exactly that. Carloto’s writings explored the ideas of platonic soulmates, insecurities, heartbreak, love, family, coming of age, and life as a poet. She has a talent for writing about yearning, loneliness, and a longing for the intricate moments of life. 

Some of her writing’s titles were actually song titles and Carloto made a playlist that features songs if the book were to have its own soundtrack. As I listened to the playlist, I could picture her poems and prose morphing into their own individual scenes in my head. It felt light and airy and weirdly enough, it felt much more personal. There were lines where I felt thankful for her to describe feelings I’ve felt into words I’ve had trouble expressing on my own. Even though I hadn’t experienced her stories myself, her art still brought this sense of familiarity and coming of age nostalgia that made me feel comfortable and understood. 

What I really admired about this book was the use of multimedia embedded into the pages. Besides poetry, she included scans of notes and her writings, letters, postcards, old renaissance photos of cherubs, and the element that really brought the reading experience to life; the use of photography. Carloto incorporated her own photos she took on 35mm film for certain poems and sometimes took up full pages. I have film cameras of my own and I know the rewarding feeling of being able to capture memories onto film and how much more meaning it has. This was a delightful touch because it felt like a breath of fresh air from reading her words and the film aided in bringing her writing to life. At times it felt like I was watching a movie that she filmed herself and it made the poems much more tangible. 

Film for Her is a timeless and fascinating read for poetry and film lovers. If you find yourself romanticizing everything around you and get swallowed up in your imagination of the past, present, and future like I do, this storybook should undoubtedly be added to your reading list.

• 35mm film
• Film for Her
• nostalgia
• poetry
• storybook