Nancy Epton is an independent scholar based in the UK. She was a reader in English at Oxford, UK, and was the first student to complete an MRes in Film, Theatre and Television (Distinction) at the University of Reading, UK. Her primary interests reside in the study of film, particularly in relation to the myriad ways imagery and sound contribute to cinematic narratives that contain minimal spoken dialogue, or no spoken dialogue at all.
Theorists often feel unresponsive to film’s sensory elements. Not Nancy Epton, who has a gift for detailing the many interesting things she sees—and hears. Her investigation of “silence” shows that an artistic cinema has been continuous, in a resonant way, from the silent era to today’s vanguard. * Justin Vicari is Author of Marks of Toil (2014) and Nicolas Winding Refn and the Violence of Art (2014) *