So Mayer

So Mayer is the author of Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2015) and The Cinema of Sally Potter: A Politics of Love (Wallflower, 2009), and co-editor of There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond (Wayne State University Press, 2010) and Lo personal es politico, an anthology of essays on feminist documentary (INAAC, 2011). A BFI Film Classics on Orlando is forthcoming in 2021, and essay on Weimar and queer anti-fascism A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula Press) in 2020.

They have also published four poetry collections, <jacked a kaddish> (Litmus Publishing, 2018), Her Various Scalpels (Shearsman, 2009), The Private Parts of Girls (Salt, 2011) and (O) (Arc, 2015). They are a member of queer feminist curators Club des Femmes and a co-founder of campaigners Raising Films.

They tweet at @tr0ublemayer.

Articles by So Mayer

1 - 10 of 63

An A-Z of the 2010s in film

What were the movies like in the 2010s? We offer you 26 takes on the decade.

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Polls and surveys
From the Magazine

Watching the watchers: how Cameraperson enriches the act of filming

Cameraperson, Kirsten Johnson’s poetic, meditative exploration of the moral pitfalls and complex artistry of nonfiction filmmaking, reflects on the lessons she’s learned over the past two decades as one of the pre-eminent cinematographers in American documentary, writes Sophie Mayer.

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Interviews
The best TV series of 2019

Our inaugural critics’ poll of the top ten television series of 2019 offers a tantalising mix of comedy, horror and drama – and holds up a mirror to our age. See how 37 television critics judged the year, including Molly Haskell’s extended take on Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag.

Monday, January 6, 2020

Annual round-ups
Generation snowflake: Frozen II and the quest for climate justice

Nature’s resilience is put to the test in Disney’s sequel to its animated Arctic-kingdom blockbuster, in which millennial poster princesses Elsa and Anna inherit a world convulsed by environmental trauma, says So Mayer.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Features
Merata: the Maori film legend and her legacy

Pioneering filmmaker Merata Mita was “the spark that actually set the fire” for indigenous cinema, as a new Netflix documentary about her by her son Hepi reminds the world, writes So Mayer.

Monday, October 7, 2019

Features
Disconnect my skin: The Great Hack visualises surveillance capitalism

How can cinema make visible the digital data transfers that increasingly dominate our lives? Jehane Noujaim’s and Karim Amer’s new doc on the Cambridge Analytica scandal (and Sleater-Kinney’s new music video) step up to the challenge, says So Mayer.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Unfiction
TV we can believe in: hope, growth and change in The Good Place and Steven Universe

In Michael Schur and Rebecca Sugar’s twin pop-ethical trips through the plastic-fantastic cosmos, hells can become paradises when met with love and elective labour, says So Mayer.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

TV
Barbara Hammer obituary: an experimental pioneer who put lesbian life on screen

Sex, experimentation and the urge to change the world for the better run through the fascinating oeuvre of the filmmaker who almost singlehandedly defined lesbian cinema, writes So Mayer.

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Obituaries
From the Magazine

Seven facets of Agnès Varda

S&S contributors reflect on the late artist and filmmaker as cinematic pioneer, (self)portraitist, joy-maker, word poet, cartographer, multimedia artist and visual stylist, from our 90th birthday tribute issue.

Monday, April 1, 2019

Features
Agnès Varda obituary: a luminous art of an illuminated life

An unstoppably playful radical, Agnès Varda channelled a war-swept childhood into the determination to cherish and honour the personal, the marginal and the vital, records So Mayer.

Friday, March 29, 2019

Obituaries