More, this genre con­siders the rela­tion­ship of the transna­tional film-makers to their sub­jects to be a rela­tion­ship that is filtered through nar­rat­ives and icon­o­graph­ies of memory, desire, loss, long­ing and nos­tal­gia. Memor­ies are fal­lible, play­ful, and evas­ive, and the nar­rat­ives and icon­o­graph­ies that they pro­duce – in whatever type of film – are pal­impsestical, inscrib­ing rup­tures, fantas­ies, and embel­lish­ments as well as ellipses, erosions and repressions.

–Hamid Naficy, “Phobic space and lim­inal panics: Inde­pend­ent transna­tional film genre”,
in Rob Wilson & Wimal Dis­sanayake, eds, Global/Local: Cul­tural pro­duc­tion and the transna­tional imaginary

Lyr­ical, sen­sual… I want to write like this!