Basma Alsharif: I took the term and started exploring it for myself, wondering what it means.
Myla Goldberg: It’s nothing dramatic. It doesn’t bother me.
Alsharif: I think it just lulls you into a space for watching the film, into a kind of trance. And it works.
Goldberg: That’s never happened before and I don’t know if it will happen again, but it was totally cool.
Alsharif: That’s a really unsettling feeling.
•••
Goldberg: The nice thing about first person is it’s very dynamic and exciting, but the difficulty is that it’s very limiting: you can only see through one set of eyes.
Alsharif: And the weight of that, that imagination, is far heavier than the denial of living with a false hope.
•••
Goldberg: I love that it clearly used to have glorious days and now those days are so behind it—that contrast between what it was and what it is now is really fascinating.
Alsharif: Anyone who has any way to get out gets out.
Goldberg: It depends on the semester.
•••
Alsharif: And it has been a psychological battle.
Goldberg: The reader finds out what actually happened.
Alsharif: These things are not unconnected.
Goldberg: Be prepared to be rejected. In my office at home. It’s a little bit insane.
Alsharif: Absolutely. Although, in reality, I am as much a foreigner there as I was in France or perhaps even the US.