Impossible Encounters: Two by Joanna Hogg + Book Signing with Shonni Enelow

British filmmaker Joanna Hogg has been directing movies of uncommon depth and artistry for the past decade and a half. In films that are both rigorously self-reflexive and stirringly emotional, Hogg plumbs her own autobiography and examines her status as artist, lover, daughter, partner, and image-maker. In her new monograph for University of Illinois Press’s acclaimed Contemporary Film Directors series, critic and professor Shonni Enelow has written the first full-length book on Joanna Hogg, analyzing her films and placing them both a contemporary cinematic and art historical continuum.

Enelow will present two of Hogg’s most striking films, both of which demand the big screen for their visual nuance, and each of which is in its own way about a haunted house: Archipelago, about a privileged yet fractured family on a harrowing vacation, starring Tom Hiddleston; and The Eternal Daughter, a gothic ghost tale starring Tilda Swinton in two astonishing performances. In between these screenings, Enelow will sign copies of her book, which will be on sale in the Museum shop. Following Archipelago, Enelow will take part in an on-stage Q&A about Hogg’s work with novelist-critic Christine Smallwood. 

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Shonni Enelow is a critic and scholar who writes about film and theater, focusing on realism, modernism, and acting. She is the author of Method Acting and Its Discontents (Northwestern University Press, 2015), which won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and the co-author, with David Levine, of the artists’ book A Discourse on Method (53rd State Press, 2020). Her writing on drama and theater has appeared in Modern Drama, Theater Survey, and Theater, and her film criticism has appeared in Reverse Shot, Film Comment, MUBI Notebook, and The Criterion Collection. She is a professor of English at Fordham University.