1A I slip into a crowded theater to feel close to people without being seen. My elbow just barely on the armrest, I watch the film color the room yellow then blue, each face in my peripheral blurred by…
One of the many things you learn in analog photography classes is how to make a contact sheet: you cut your film roll into strips, lay them across a sheet of photo paper in the darkroom, expose and develop the paper, and then step back into the fluorescent light beyond the darkroom’s revolving, light-proof door to scrutinize which photos are salvageable and which are shit. The paper becomes a quilt, different locations and moments stitched together in silver gelatin.
Looking at my first contact sheet in college, I had the distinct feeling that I needed to find connections between the images, that looking at a vertical column, even if the images themselves were taken weeks and miles apart, they were linked because of their placement on the page. I wanted to translate this kind of collage into writing, which led me to the lyric essay, where memories become associative vignettes. At first, the vignettes may appear scattered or randomly joined, but they are connected by a deeper thread—an image, a theme, a feeling—that the writer reveals to the reader over the course of the essay.
I expanded this concept to another analog technology: split reels. Projectionists and filmmakers use split reels to ship and transfer motion picture films in smaller chunks, rather than in heavy fixed-flange reels. The split reel comes in two metal halves with a plastic core the film winds around, the contraption easy to pop open and slip off for projection. I began thinking about this compact way of transferring stories as a representation of the lyric essay form, in which memories wind tightly around a core idea to connect with a larger whole. I then discovered that in the silent film era split reels meant something different: they were single rolls of film that contained two distinct movies.
I combined the two versions to make the form behind “Split Reel”—the columns visually represent the metal halves of a modern split reel, with the reader connecting the two juxtaposed vignettes, and the content within each column operates as the two separate films from split reels of the 1920s. The left column examines my fears of intimacy, being seen, and objectification. The right column dives into my childhood obsession with movies, the scars on my body (caused by severe hypermobility and mast cell activation syndrome), and my frustrations with representations of beauty. The columns speak to one another, held together by scenes of movies and videos, but remain separate until the final section, at which point I have accepted my sexuality, the value of mark-making, and the power of allowing others to see my body.
As the old adage goes, form follows content. Here, form is content. It’s playful, immersive, and generates a new mode of connection between memories, bodies, and narrative forms. And, yes, it made me crave popcorn by the end of it. More than anything, though, it showed me how much I can push in form, and how much form can offer in return.
GABRIELLA GRACEFFO is a poet, essayist, and photographer based in Missoula, Montana. She received her MFA in Poetry, MA in Literature, and PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (English and Psychology) from the University of Montana. Her writing, which explores themes of sexuality, trauma, chronic illness, place, and artmaking, has appeared in Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Hippocampus, and more. She serves as Managing Editor of Poetry Northwest, Program Coordinator of The National Poetry Series, and Editorial Assistant to Julie Stevenson at Massie, McQuilkin, & Altman. She is currently working on her memoir-in-essays and a novel. Find her on Instagram @gabi_graceffo.
