Artists’ correspondences are typically imagined as an exchange in written letters, but for filmmakers the increasing use of digital technology has enabled the possibility of exchanging video letters. One interesting example of the emerging format of filmed letters is the Todas las cartas: Correspondencias filmicas/The Complete Letters: Filmed Correspondences project, which was commissioned and curated by Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and exhibited in 2011–2012. The exhibition featured filmed exchanges between five pairs of filmmakers who were invited to investigate the epistolary format and reflect on the creative motivations that informed their artistic practice. The aim was to unite pairs of filmmakers who are geographically distant and yet able to correspond with respect to their vision of cinema: José Luis Guerín (Spain) and Jonas Mekas (Lithuania/USA), Isaki Lacuesta (Spain) and Naomi Kawase (Japan), Albert Serra (Spain) and Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Jaime Rosales (Spain) and Wang Bing (China), and Fernando Eimbcke (Mexico) and So Yong Kim (South Korea/USA).

The subtitle of the project places emphasis on the double meaning of the noun ‘correspondence’, as communication (through filmed letters) and as compatibility (a mutual sensibility of cinema). But the two senses of ‘correspondence’ are incongruous with each other in The Complete Letters. Whereas traditional artists’ correspondence is premised upon reciprocity and enables self-reflection, the shift from the written word to the video letter undermines and complicates the reflexive potentiality of a transformative dialogue. In these filmed correspondences, there is little mutual sensibility of cinema, instead we see contrasting methods, approaches, and ways of thinking about image-making.