| Title | : | Film for Her |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1524853771 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781524853778 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 |
| Publication | : | Published November 17, 2020 |
Film for Her is a story book of people, places, and memories captured on film. Through photographs, poetry, prose, and a short story, Orion Carloto invites readers to remember the forgotten and reach into the past, find comfort in the present, and make sense of the intangible future. Film photography isn’t just eye candy; it’s timeless and romantic—the ideal complement to Carloto’s writing. In Film for Her, much like a visual diary, word and image are intertwined in a book perfect for both gift and self-purchase.
Film for Her Reviews
-
I believe that every poem deserves to be written – it's such a personal form of expression, how could someone be taken from the right to form feelings out of words, to their own benefit? When it comes to publishing poetry, however, that's a whole different matter. Which poems will have merit to people from outside your own four walls?
Film for Her is Orion Carloto's second poetry publication, a girl living in Los Angeles whom I have never heard of before picking this volume up. What intrigued me was the set-up: Carloto wanted to write about the in-between moments, not the highs and lows, but but the quiet seconds that end up meaning so much to us. An intriguing endeavour.
The poems confused me. I just couldn't connect with them at all. I couldn't find a flow in them, reading them out loud made me stumble and stutter. What a found instead were themes I thought of as very self-indulgent. It's like Carloto decided she was going to be a poet and then begun living and interpreting life accordingly.
"These people here bore me;
I don't care much for
empty conversation
blanketed with narcissism."
There's a lot of suffering in here, she writes about self-doubt and fighting with self-hatred, she romanticises past relationships and daydreams about new ones. All of this is fine, I guess, yet I felt her way words were as mundane as the themes she chose to write about. Writing about the every day only becomes intriguing once you display it in a new light, not when you write about it in an equally every day manner.
"I crave a bond so mad,
devoted to consumption,
aching delicately with joy,
engulfed in a cocoon of miracles
where we lie together
at the edge of desire."
What I did like were the visuals accompanying the poems. The book itself is lovely to hold and lovely to look at. Apparently, film photography is Carloto's second passion next to writing and I enjoyed the spontaneous and quiet photographs. I feel like I don't have the right to judge writing that. am aware means a lot to the writer, so I'll leave it by saying that this wasn't for me. -
(2.5)This just wasn’t for me. I liked some of the poems and prose in the beginning but found myself losing interest as I read on. There wasn’t much that I found relatable, some parts just reeked of privilege, money and the influencer life which personally isn’t interesting to me at all. This book just seems to have been written/put together for her fans who adore the type of aesthetic she sells on her social media platforms. Most of it just felt like a pretty instagram/tumblr page with poems and prose that often try too hard and at times become incomprehensible.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. -
this was so.. boring. orion girl i love u so much but this book just felt like reading tumblr poetry from 2013 and not the good kind
-
Another book finished from a dear friend & I’m feeling so satisfied with reading this moment in time of her life journey. I honestly loved this just as much as I did Orion’s first poetry collection “Flux” if not more. I felt as though her vocabulary & writing style grew more ripe with age & it really showed in this book. Orion has a very specific & well-crafted aesthetic that was really depicted nicely in this collection. I loved her inclusion of film photography because she is insanely talented at curating what shots to include. Comparing this to other poetry collections I’ve read with photography included, this was very well done & I always felt like the photos made sense, were intriguing to look at, & not just used as placeholder images to flip through. I will say, I enjoyed the first half of this book a bit more than the end. I normally dog-ear my favorite pages & most of the dog-eared bits are at the front, but there were definitely a few more towards the end that really struck me too! Just less consistently I guess. I always want to make my reviews unbiased EVEN IF the author is my friend. It has been a pleasure to read another book from Orion & I look forward to many more. This specific book made me understand not only more about Orion’s life, but also it made me admire how well she is able to capture moments through words & photos. It put into perspective how the years of her dedication to tumblr, youtube, & instagram have influenced the way she is able to share her life. From the perspective of another online creator, her raw talent is unimaginable. This book made me feel like I vacation at a French chateau during my summers eating baguettes, drinking fine wine, & dipping my tanned toes in the pool. Even aside from aesthetics, her writing showed the depths of her being & journey through heartbreak, childhood nostalgia, comparison, & much more. The themes felt relatable & well-represented & I was entertained throughout. I would recommend this to anyone as a coffee table book not only for the beautiful canvas look of it, but also because if your guests flip through it, they will be immediately captured by this collection. This was a great read to end off our year of book club with! It was our first poetry selection all year & I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!
-
Give a narcissist a book deal, and this is the trash she'll create. I've never read anything more trite and self-absorbed than this. I couldn't even finish it. I think this girl should stick to modeling because she CANNOT write.
-
the consequences of rupi kaur
-
this is exactly what i needed right now
-
If this book was published in 2014, Tumblr would’ve ate this up. This is the love child between Rupi Kaur and Halsey’s poetry. A few standout lines, but I found the photos much more beautiful than the words. Something about this didn’t feel entirely genuine…maybe I’m just turned off by people who romanticize the trauma? Idk. It almost felt as if she was writing poems how she thought she was supposed to be write them…some of the phrasing seemed incredibly familiar, but not in a personal way…it’s always easier to critique than to create, but this didn’t do it for me. Glad I read it though! Learning what you don’t like is just as important as learning what you do.
-
orion carloto writes poetry for people who don't read poetry
-
A mix of personal poetry and photography, Film for Her is a documentation of growing up. While I liked the theme and found the photos to be really interesting (especially in the 90s indie band album cover style of composition), the poems weren't for me. A good example is 'Reflections after January':
I thought I had a dream, but it wasn't mine.
In front of me: mirage of you so cruelly lonely.
Mutilation in your expressions, mocking my gentle
attempts
to write a poem out of this
I fear this insignificance that's needled
it's way back into my frontal cortex.
A past of watching the kids eat from their silver spoons,
close enough to feel their body heat
but far enough to be teased.
Growing restless in this weary mind,
savaging what once was,
you become a figment
in the rifts of my imagination
only appearing when I close my eyes
long enough to feel my hollowness.
There's lots of emotion there, but the language is too simultaneously straightforward and vague for me to really enjoy. 2.5 stars.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review. -
A very well written, yearning and lustfully romantic sophomore poetry collection.
Carloto carries this collection with crisp and amorous imagery, with images somewhat related to the poem right next to it.
While the writing oftentimes was simple, she utilised that simplicity and used it to tell the story of her love, heartbreak, and the purity’s of adolescent longing.
I felt that some of the topics kept repeating, which at times felt redundant, but overall the book was very well told and clearly stylistically independent and grounded.
Clear strings of motifs and topics discussed and apparent in the book, though oftentimes felt overly discussed.
I liked the comfortability that Carloto had with this book, not afraid to shed the vulnerable and hardships of her life, while still being able to shine lights on the romantic and beautiful parts of life.
Strangely this book carried a weird sense of nostalgia, though I have not experienced the things Orion discusses the same way or at all. Though something about seems so beautiful and pure, like the colours you see as a kid. I enjoyed those moments.
all in all: good, romantic, though oftentimes redundant poetry collection. may pick up her other collection, Flux. -
I wanted to like this so bad but it’s just another cliche poetry book with pretty pictures attached to it for the aesthetic. Most of the poems were pretty repetitive. She is a good storyteller though and her short stories were well written and captivating, I just wish there were more of them. And by the end I just didn’t seem to care.
-
really liked the way she spoke about love and heartbreak + thought it was rlly relatable but some of her poetry was just ... bad i'm sorry
-
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Let me first start off by saying, I have always struggled with poetry & prose collections. I find there are individual pieces I like, but the work as a whole never resonates with me once I take my eyes away from the page. Unfortunately, the same thing happened to me with "Film For Her".
I think where Carloto shone as an author was in her longer pieces about her family and, most notably for me, her writings about her various travels. 'Maybe, I Don't Miss New York?', '5 P.M. In My Brooklyn Apartment', 'This Is Twenty-Three' and 'Amuse-Toi Bien À Paris My Dear' were my favorites because I could feel the nostalgia, in all its various forms, that she was trying to present me with.
I gave this book two stars because it didn't feel revolutionary in any way. Some pieces in the collection felt like what I would call "Instagram Poetry", aka the whole piece was a short sentence or two that was supposed to be deep but just felt cliche to me.
An example:
"And I'm on my third
cup of coffee
working overtime in my
tireless thoughts
trying to remember what
it feels like to forget"
-Internal 9 to 5
Also, in our modern social media age, the photographs, ticket stubs, postcards, and handwritten notes felt generic to me and like I could have found plenty of others just like them on Tumblr or VSCO.
.
The author seems lovely and if she ever wrote a short story, or something with a more structured theme I would be interested in seeing more. If you like authors like Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace then definitely pick this up because I think you will adore it!
Overall, this book definitely has an audience who will eat it up and love every second, that audience just isn't me. -
I wanted to like this soooo bad. Probably because the book itself is beautiful. The binding, the cover, the photography! Carloto has a high eye for aesthetics and this book showcases just that.
But, the poetry doesn’t make sense and is valid. The only pieces from this book I can can remember is the prose. But even that seems hollow. Where Flux was enraging with how cheesy and bad the poetry was, this is just vapid. I think Carloto tries to make everything fit her aesthetic, but when you’re writing poetry that can take away the emotional connection. Nothing about chain smoking at Paris cafes or eating fruit in Italy is personal. Or all that remarkable. Carloto is trying real hard to fit an aesthetic, but you can’t bend and mould poetry to an aesthetic and expect it to say anything meaningful. It’s lacking emotion and at times a sense. -
I don't want to rate this, because it felt personal that i didn't actually treat ot like an actual memoir/poetry collection.
Giving it a bad rating will mean that i didn't love it, which wont do the tike i spent enjoying it justice.and giving it a good one will mean its good which honestly it isn't lol. -
if i'm being honest "Madonna in Glory" is the poem that saved this book for me, give me anything sapphic and i will eat that s*** up.
-
ARC Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
“Film for her” is a collection of Poetry, prose and photography written by Orion Carloto.
******************************************
There’s definitely a certain aesthetic this book fits into that I think many people could enjoy.
Of the Alexa Chung-It girl-variety.
It’d definitely be a book to look for if you want something dreamy, with a heaping of romanticization.
However, I felt it leaned a bit too heavily into these aesthetics for my taste.
This book isn’t all bad. I did actually enjoy the photography; just wasn’t a fan of the poetry and very little of the prose.
Perhaps I’ll come back to this later on when I’m in the right mood, but for the time being I wasn’t particularly impressed with this one. -
An absolutely stunning book full of honest and intelligent poetry, stories, and more— Film For Her completely blew me away.
I think I knew going into this that I would have nothing but positive things to say, seeing as how I’ve been a long time fan of the author and admire practically everything she puts out. But alas, this book still impacted me to my very core. Carloto’s words are everything I wish mine to be as a fellow writer; there was this incredible sense of feeling seen by her writing, a kind of relatable touch that I don’t often get to experience in published poetry. If you’re a fan of hers, or just simply need some new reading material, I would definitely give Film For Her a try. -
(4.5 stars = really liked it)
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for making this book available.
I'm pretty sure that the first time I read the summary for Film For Her, I thought it was a work of fiction, but I am not disappointed by what I got! In this book, Orion Carloto collects poems and pictures, tells stories about her life, and explores friendship, family, romance.
I've been following Orion for ages. Her videos never failed to entertain me or make me go [heart eyes] at the images she captured or make me feel an ache in my heart at her words. Although I still haven't read her debut book Flux, I was extremely happy to find this book available to read on NetGalley, as I was really looking forward to it.
I think Orion's words are so beautiful, and I found myself bookmarking several pages that held passages that I felt in my heart and pages in which the entire poem just did everything for me. Even when I couldn't relate to the topic (not many romantic adventures in my life lol), I was still able to connect or reinterpret her words (usually accidentally) in my own way. I'm a sucker for texts that feel like someone is framing life with a golden frame, where hot days feel special and not just sweaty, and sticky hands feel magical and not just, well, sticky. It just makes me feel like the moment is being enjoyed and there's beauty being found in everything. And although I, as Carloto, can't always live in the moment~, reading texts like these help me try to appreciate the little things more, when I'm faced with them.
It's amazing how ALL of the pictures in this book pleased my eyes immensely. But then again, I follow her on Instagram. I knew what she was capable of.
This wasn't a full 5 star for me because I felt like the last ¼ of it wasn't as… good? as the first ¾. It just didn't hit the same, but that's okay. -
the poems are absolute trash. so goddamn pretentious- and not in a fun way. the author is trying to be deep, but she’s just regurgitating the same things ever other modern “poet” does. i was completely dumbfounded as to how this book even got published and why i see it pushed everywhere, that is, until i checked her social medias, and it was clear that this was just a cash grab.
the reason it’s two stars is because the book is absolutely gorgeous, i will say that and give credit where credits is due. but besides sitting on a coffee table and looking pretty, i don’t see any other value to it. -
The photography is fucking amazing.
The poems are better than I thought.
Not bad... not bad at all. -
orion has such a magical way with words, i devoured this 🍴
-
''Hemingway once said, ''Write long and hard about what hurts,'' but what if nothing's hurting? What I feel inside is both bedraggled and empty. [...] Patience is something that I'm working on. And as I tap the end of my pen on the corners of my temples, I remind myself that it's okay if I don't have the right words right now -or that I'm not Hemingway.''
Filled with longing, love, and heartbreak, Orion Carloto manages to write down her feelings in a way that makes the reader feel as if they were feeling them themselves. I often could feel my heart breaking and Carloto's memories slipping into my mind -I could picture the house in Portugal, the bar where she celebrated her twenty-third birthday, the beach she got drunk in in France. Orion Carloto wrote about the pain she endured but, at the same time, talked about hope. Maybe she didn't do it directly -she never really mentioned it, if I'm honest-, but the whole book feels like a learning experience; upon finishing it, I feel as if I've learnt acceptance, and as if I'm ready to love again.
It took me a bit to get into Carloto's style at the beginning -I'm mostly used to Shakespeare and Keats, as an English major-, but, once I'd been reading for thirty minutes, I couldn't stop. I was afraid that I wasn't going to like this as much as I liked Flux, since I read Flux when I had just started my degree and I was impressionable (and I would read any kind of poetry thrown at me just to say that I read poetry, even if the words didn't make sense and the author was just writing the book to earn some money), but that wasn't the case. Carloto grew, in a way, alongside me, and it has been delightful to be a part of that journey.
''But alas, I am not in love.
And now, too, I suppose,
I am no longer a writer.''
edit: more than two years later, my opinion has changed (not drastically, but not little). while i do think this was a decent book, i realise now that my opinion was biased because of my years following orion on social media. i believe this book is a clear example of becoming a poet because you are famous and not the other way around, and i agree with some reviews stating that reading this felt like reading tumblr poetry in 2013. -
Orion Carloto’s “Film for Her” is a winding path through a nostalgia that does not belong to you, though maybe at the end of this book it will feel like it does. A collage, mixture of poetry, prose, and pictures, “Film for Her” guides us through the years of Carloto’s early adulthood, following her across the country and the world as she discovers both new places and herself, and herself in those new places. How lonely and invigorating living alone in a foreign city can be.
“I’ve sewn my eyes shut
and relived visions of you
through many passing moons”
The subject matter of the poems sways from (lost) love to (as she calls it herself) growing pains to false and new starts. Not all poems resonated with me, and I think that was partly to do with the subject matter. It didn’t always feel like it could break loose from the “okay/good” level to something new and burrowing. I did really feel like the different parts of her life that Carloto describes and goes through actually felt different while reading. As if she is maturing and growing not only within the narration but also as she is writing. This works very well to enhance the feeling that periods in her life come and go as you read.
“In the darkness
I can feel your heart beating
on the corners of my shoulder blades,
and I know that there’s love in there
both pure and divine.”
I think the strength of this book is really the collaboration of words and photographs that together craft a tangible nostalgic atmosphere, one that surrounded me fully as I made my way through. This made the book stand out beyond “just” being a book of poetry about someone’s life. The 35mm film in combination with Carloto’s sense of framing and movement as she photographs carries something magical that really radiated through the rest of the pages as well.
“I’ve poured this raddled body
into more people than I can count.
Crossing off tally marks
on the backs of necks
creating strangers
out of lovers.”
I received a free ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. -
3.5 stars
thanks to the publisher and netgalley for providing me with this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
absolutely dripping in nostalgia, orion carloto's film for her is like taking a look into someone's diary and learning who they truly are. the book contains poetry, but it also contains photographs, letters and other things that make up a person and capture our memories. it feels deeply personal to carloto and if you don't have an interest in her as a person it might not be the perfect fit for you. but even if you have no idea who carloto is I think you can get something from her work, because as we begin to understand the depths of another person we can begin to understand ourselves.
film for her didn't always work for me, some poems felt a bit generic, shallow and sometimes like they were trying to hard to be deep. that's not saying that's the reality of what the poems actually are, but I think that will happen with most poetry collections, not everything will resonate. but what did resonate with me in this collection, resonated a lot. the themes of loneliness, family, longing and heartbreak hit very deep and throughout a lot of the collection I felt nostalgic for a past that I haven't even lived myself.
seeing the world through orion carloto's rose-tinted glasses, with this collection, was a delight and I would recommend anyone who feels like it would be the right fit for them to do the same. -
4 stars.
I found Orion through instagram before she published Flux so I already knew I would absolutely love the photos in this collection but I was surprised to find that I loved the writing even more.
I was trying to keep track of my favorites but they became too many so I lost track. I actually had to go back and annotate it which I've never done before.
I could relate to some of the poems and short stories but even the ones that were just about her were absolutely beautiful. I just absolutely loved it, I read straight through it in like an hour and now I keep reading everything like it's poetry in my head.
I'll leave you with a verse from my favorite poem in this collection, PHILAUTIA'S LOVE, ACT l:
”Seasonal depression
stopped knocking at my door
two years ago.
Unsure if it’s because of
the Lexapro
or because Los Angeles
only knows one season.” -
‘Film For Her’ is an absolutely beautiful and passionate piece of work by an author and poet that I know I’ll always be craving more from. It reminded me so so much of Patti Smith’s writing, particularly ‘Just Kids’ and the relationship between Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe.
This beauty is a mixture of lyrics, poetry and anecdotal stories and it’s incredibly tender and moving. I found so many of the pieces extremely relatable and it rugged on my heartstrings the entire time I was reading.
I highly recommend you read this amazing book, particularly if you enjoy poetry, Patti Smith and reading about love. -
i know many people find “short poetry” exhausting or repetitive but i didn’t find myself thinking that at all while reading Film For Her. i purchased the book about a month ago and read every page in one sitting. since then i’ve read it like ten times. i enjoy writing poetry but i often find myself lost when trying to find inspiration, this book however put so much motivation me to keep writing and it’s safe to say it was the inspiration for a lot of my recent work. not to mention her photography is absolutely stunning. i would also highly recommend Orion’s first book, Flux, as well, though it doesn’t contain any photography it is still such an incredible piece of literature!!!
-
Not to be THAT person, but does anyone know what poetry is anymore? It’s not just a few buzzwords linked together in lowercase letters- it’s prose, it’s symbolism, it’s the expression of rawness that stories sometimes can’t provide.
This book reeked of privilege, self-centeredness, and overconfidence. Stick to Youtube. Or write better.
“Oh like you could do better” I really couldn’t. But at least I’m aware of that.
I will say, the visuals in this are gorgeous. That is all though. Every other word is insufferable.
