Film For Her is the second poetry collection by Orion Carloto. I absolutely adored her first collection, Flux. And so naturally I had high expectations for her new one. But I am sad to say that I didn't love it. In fact I am quite torn about it. It was a mix of poems, prose and pictures. The pictures didn't do much for me, I didn't think they were amazing or something. I am not an expert in photography but there wasn't a picture in there that I would like to frame and put on my wall. Some of the prose was touching, particularly when it talked about her parents. Oh, and the one about Carloto's birthday, that one was good. The rest was just okay for me. The poems were what I was mostly looking forward to and I was disappointed. I liked the ones about the lack of inspiration, of not knowing what to write about, those touched me deeply. But the rest wasn't memorable. Flux made me feel so much, it was as if that book was made of emotions. But this one didn't make me feel all that much unfortunately.
2.5* I think. Because some of it was enjoyable.
Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the arc! This title will be released November 17, 2020.

I was obsessed with Flux and when I heard of Orion’s new collection, I had to get my hands on it right away! I adored the photography she accompanied with her writing. It was sublime.

Going through these pages felt so personal and raw like I was reading her diary. I experienced nostalgia for memories that weren’t mine. I was transported, transfixed.

Orion is unapologetic of her over romanticization of life and that is what made this so great. You really understand the world from her rose-tinted glasses. Don’t get me wrong, though, it isn’t always glamorous.

If you loved Flux, you will love this even more! I recommend to all the dreamers who are messy in life.

Reading the first pieces of this collection all I could think of is Taylor Swift’s lyrics “In my defense, I have none for digging up the grave another time” for Film For her is Carloto’s way to relive the past and relish in its bittersweet lingering feelings.


Vulnerable as ever, Orion Carloto takes us on a nostalgic trip down her memory lane. She opens up about Childhood, her family, friends, her love life, and travelling expeditions. Through prose, poetry and photographs we get to explore her dreams, experiences, expectations, and self-growth.

A first generation American and a daughter of two immigrants who’s unexpectedly found their way to each other Orion expresses how her background and roots have shaped her perception of love and life. She talks about the influence her parents had on her as a child, and how their free spirited upraising of her guided her in pursuing her dreams, and navigating love as she introduces us to her coming of age, and the different phases she underwent through her moves and travels.

Honestly, I was expected the work to be centered on heartbreak, However, Carloto expands her thematic choices to include many facets of her journey. Loneliness, alienation, and mental illness; all of these emotions overshadow romance in this collection and cast a romanticized light on her relationships. The descriptions of the places she visited, the late nights she spent thinking of her lovers, her fervent affection towards her mother and friends, and the dates she took herself to. All of it felt like a daydream, a bit pretentious, but still, it's admirable. The romanticisation of her life casts a beautiful glow on her small town girl with a big dreams life, and on the fact that she's made them real.

Nevertheless, I am not quite fond of those photographs. With them, Film for Her felt clustered and somehow incohesive. I get that the premise of the collection is Nostalgia, and those pictures are meant to reinforce its major theme, but I found myself overwhelmed by them, especially when they only seem to provide an aesthetic pleasing touch to her poems. I still prefer Flux over Film for Her (YES, I AM A MASOCHIST), but that does not negate the beauty of this book. It's a good read during one of those rainy days when you want to stay in bed and do nothing.

Here is a snippet from my review from Orion's first collection, "Flux" -
"Her words have resonated with me, but I kept rooting for her to touch a little farther, a bit deeper. I kept saying in my head,'Go ahead, Orion. Push a little farther.'"
and I truly without a doubt believe that she has. I enjoy reading poetry about the kind of love that is not often spoken of and this was quite pleasant to read. While I enjoyed the prose much more than the poems, everything showed significant growth from her first collection. Some of the stories written about felt so personal, almost so as if I wasn't allowed to read them, as if I opened up her journal laying on her bedside table. This, however, was an important and much needed feeling. It helped me to relate on a level that is far beyond the surface.
Flux to me was relatable in the sense of recognizing, "Hey! I got my heartbroken too!", and nothing much beyond that.
Where as Film For Her was as if she pulled a story out of my own journal and said, "Here. I'll write this for the both of us."
I look forward to plenty more, Orion.
With love, Amarie xx

"7 years of bad luck love

We were mirrored lovers
staring at one another
through the reflection
of broken glass."

Thank you NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me with a temporary arc.

Film For Her is a visual poetry collection by Orion Carloto capturing the moments that live in her timeless photographs and memories.

Fueled with nostalgia and the inherent romanticism of it, Orion Carloto intimates her words with her lens to create a visual diary and captures the bittersweet distance of the past, finding beauty & comfort of the present and the certain longing towards the finite future. A few of Orion's poems tips towards a sense of vagueness in the context that makes it tough for one to properly be intimate with but most of them finds a way to make you let out a soft gasp and ache for what it is. Orion's art nudges you to feel for the past, for the present and for the tomorrow with its softness and aesthetics, which stands to be the highlight of this collection.

With pride for her heritage and her sexuality, Orion's romanticism is what stands out in her words and the film photography complementing it to create on such aesthetic experience that goes well with black coffee and gloomy days at one's comfort cafe. This collection could have been so much more but it just failed to work out with me at a few points and as for the others, I adored them! I have a good feeling about her debut collection Flux but this one is a collection worth going over for a read. As for the others times on which you'll find me flipping the pages, it would be for a few favourites as Atlanta, Santal 33, Déjà Vu, Ludus' Spell, Attic Tragedy and some more of them.

Rating: 3.25/5

I was gifted this book by NetGalley, and this is my first review for them.

I enjoyed the visual element of this book being that I am a multimedia poet myself who has been featured in venues such as the Athens International Video Poetry Festival.

If you enjoy Instagram poetry (think Lang Leav, Rupi Kaur, and Amanda Lovelace) then I think you will like this book. The language is similar to those used in this genre, and the visuals in the book are aesthetically pleasing.

My main criticism with the book is that it was kind of all over the place. I was unsure whether there was a chronology to the book and wanted to know more about where the author was in her life when she wrote the poems.

Orion Carloto pours her heart and soul out in her collection of poetry, prose, and photography, Film For Her. Carloto delves deep in what it means to be in love and to experience heartbreak, using mixed media to help tell her tale.

Orion has mastered romanticizing her life and all of what happens in it. She shares her late night thoughts, curated from her fire escape, and the tales of her life in color.

Film For Her is a collection of dark love, blistering joy, and a reminder that life is beautiful, even in it's chaos.

Using poetry and prose paired with photos, Carloto takes us on a dreamlike stroll through memory. There are some lovely images throughout the book, with many poignant lines about love and longing for both people and the past. Reading it put me in the kind of nostalgic and slightly melancholy mood one might experience while watching a sunset, or when alone with your thoughts at 3 AM. The photos included in the book enhance the reading experience, contributing to the feeling of being immersed in an exploration of the past. While a few of the pieces fell a bit flat for me, that was outweighed by others that struck chords within me. So much of the emotion Carloto poured onto the pages felt relatable, and I saw pieces of myself scattered amongst the words. I definitely do not regret reading this collection; I'll be sitting here in nostalgic reflection for a while afterward. Thank you to Andrews McMeel Publishing and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

Orion Carloto's words have a way of making me feel things I do not think I have ever felt before. I discovered her on Instagram a year or two back and fell completely in love with her style. I read her first book, Flux, in last year and really enjoyed it and so, I was over the moon when I got a copy of her newest release in my hands.

I loved everything about Film for Her—the poems, layout, photographs, everything. I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy soon so that I can display it in my photos and house for everyone to see. It truly is a stunning book and it's one I highly recommend.

I read a lot of poetry and I’m always on the look out for new voices. I’m so glad I stumbled across Carloto and I look forward to reading more of her work. Film for Her is a fantastic book, full of great pictures, fantastic poetry and the odd short piece of prose. I savoured every word of it. I wasn’t sure if I’d like the photos at first, but they enrich the text. I enjoyed the poems the most. The prose pieces were also very good but thankfully there are only a few as the poetry and photos made Film for Her very special. The best pieces were Attic tragedy, Dancing Queen, I Forgot How Dangerous A Dream Could Be, Self-Portrait of my Insecurities and Would I?

I don't usually read a lot of poetry books, but I've been a fan of Orion's videos and writing since forever, so, of course, when I learned she's writing another book, I had to read it.

In Film for Her, Orion talks about growing up in Georgia, her parents, love platonic and romantic, and heartbreak. Her pieces about her childhood, her parents, and platonic soulmates stood out the most those, were my favorite because I could feel the nostalgia, and I was able to reminiscent of my childhood. Some of the other poems were too short and felt a bit too flat for me. I think adding photos tied the whole book together, they were aesthetically pleasing and told a story of their own.

I think I had way too many expectations for this book that it ended up disappointing me a little because of how flat some of the poems were, and I found myself not caring about them.

Overall I had fun reading and reviewing this book, and I look forward to seeing more of Orion's work.

3.5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for making this book available.


I'm not sure how to feel about this yet. I love that it's a mixture of poetry and photography, the photos certainly add to the aesthetics of the poetry. How she writes about her parents and their lives and what they went through warmed my heart.

Although alot of this book felt very romanticised, which made me feel indifferent about it.

This book just wasn’t for me. I liked some of the poems and prose in the beginning but found myself losing interest as I read on. There wasn’t much that I found relatable, some parts just reeked of privilege, money and the influencer life which personally isn’t interesting to me at all. This book just seems to have been written/put together for her fans who adore the type of aesthetic she sells on her social media platforms. Most of it just felt like a pretty instagram/tumblr page with poems and prose that often try too hard and at times become incomprehensible.

[ Thanks to NetGalley for giving me an ARC of this book ]

A book about yearning, pining and full of angst, on the past and perhaps on the certainty of the future, what one wants and what not; enriched with pictures a little meh (which is translated with: ‘They are having the desired effect, but some seem to be promotional pictures of an unstable advertising campaign for a brand that makes a modern and pop that crash with the vibes of the rest of the rest of the book and where the strong points of it are Carloto’s prose pieces and bits of her private life.
All in all, it is a book that I would like to see on my tea table, in the living room, to randomly open and see the images, perhaps to stop myself to read some poems from time to time.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC

I would say that I have been an Orion fan since I was 17 years old. Now I am 21 and, although I do not consider myself old at all, it makes me reflect on how curious life is and how quickly time passes. When I started following her social media, I automatically became a loyal fan. I always liked her aesthetic, the aura that she gave off. The things she said and, more importantly, how she said them, made me feel better about myself. You could see that Orion was a dreamer with an artist soul, in every way, and that was comforting to me.

As soon as she published Flux, I got hold of it. My teenage self devoured it and added it to her list of favorite books. It was there that I discovered that Orion was not just an image. She was not an idol to look up to. In a way, empathizing with her poems made me humanize her. I was heartbroken myself, and even though we weren't going through the same thing, it felt like talking to a friend.

Years later, Orion announced that she was publishing his second book: Film for Her. My more mature self reacted the same as my past: wanting to read it. When it came to my hands, it was like going back to the past. I read it in a couple of hours and closed the book feeling like someone new.

You see, my experience reading Film for Her has been very different from Flux. This time I have read the book empathizing only in some parts for the simple fact of not being in the same sentimental point as the writer. But that is why I liked it so much. It is not about representing your feelings, but about making you feel. You can feel melancholy, longing, and fear in the same way that you feel love and happiness. It doesn't matter if your life is like this or not, Film for Her allows you to dive into another and feel it as yours.

I have to say that my favorite pieces have undoubtedly been Would I ?, Creature of habit and Chaves. In addition, Orion has reached another level with this work. The mixture of images, poems and texts creates a beautiful rhythm and reaches an almost cinematic level. She is beautiful in every way and no one in their right mind could deny that she is an artist from head to toe.

So I can only recommend this reading and thank Orion for letting us see a little of his mind and also teach us something along the way.

ARC Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.



“Film for her” is a collection of Poetry, prose and photography written by Orion Carloto.

******************************************

There’s definitely a certain aesthetic this book fits into that I think many people could enjoy.
Of the Alexa Chung-It girl-variety.

It’d definitely be a book to look for if you want something dreamy, with a heaping of romanticization.

However, I felt it leaned a bit too heavily into these aesthetics for my taste.

This book isn’t all bad. I did actually enjoy the photography; just wasn’t a fan of the poetry and very little of the prose.

Perhaps I’ll come back to this later on when I’m in the right mood, but for the time being I wasn’t particularly impressed with this one.

''Hemingway once said, ''Write long and hard about what hurts,'' but what if nothing's hurting? What I feel inside is both bedraggled and empty. [...] Patience is something that I'm working on. And as I tap the end of my pen on the corners of my temples, I remind myself that it's okay if I don't have the right words right now -or that I'm not Hemingway.''

Filled with longing, love, and heartbreak, Orion Carloto manages to write down her feelings in a way that makes the reader feel as if they were feeling them themselves. I often could feel my heart breaking and Carloto's memories slipping into my mind -I could picture the house in Portugal, the bar where she celebrated her twenty-third birthday, the beach she got drunk in in France. Orion Carloto wrote about the pain she endured but, at the same time, talked about hope. Maybe she didn't do it directly -she never really mentioned it, if I'm honest-, but the whole book feels like a learning experience; upon finishing it, I feel as if I've learnt acceptance, and as if I'm ready to love again.
It took me a bit to get into Carloto's style at the beginning -I'm mostly used to Shakespeare and Keats, as an English major-, but, once I'd been reading for thirty minutes, I couldn't stop. I was afraid that I wasn't going to like this as much as I liked Flux, since I read Flux when I had just started my degree and I was impressionable (and I would read any kind of poetry thrown at me just to say that I read poetry, even if the words didn't make sense and the author was just writing the book to earn some money), but that wasn't the case. Carloto grew, in a way, alongside me, and it has been delightful to be a part of that journey.

''But alas, I am not in love.
And now, too, I suppose,
I am no longer a writer.''

Beautiful photography paired with beautiful writing. It's definitely for those with an acquired taste. It's not my favorite book of poetry I've ever read. It was more like a stream of consciousness with some photos thrown in, but it was still enjoyable.

I am slightly torn on how to review this one.

First of all, I think its strength was the mix of poetry, prose and film photography. That combination certainly elevated this collection considerably.
We get to follow Orion in California and Paris travelling through and with her emotions around her parents and family, her romantic and platonic relationships.

As a 30year old I cringed in some parts that felt too pretentious but I am sure my 20 year old self would have loved. If you enjoy Rupi Kaur's work, then you should definitely check out this one.

But as far as my taste goes when it comes to poetry, I felt that it sometimes felt short on the delivery of the emotions she attempted to convey. As if she was either holding back on revealing her true inner thoughts, or simply mistaking some emotions for something else, less dark than she describes perhaps, although I could very well be wrong.

I must admit I did not know the artist beforehand and apparently she is well known on social media as a public figure so maybe that could be the reason for holding back in fear of exposing too much of her personal life, but as that was not something I was supposed to know beforehand, it did not affect my thoughts on this collection.

Last but not least, I did find some gems in there, like the poems For Caro, Deja Vu, and Naked Orchards while others felt a bit flat for me. Overall, the part I appreciated the most was the one about her parents where one can really feel the buzz and strength of her words. Admittedly, that part felt more real than any other.

Thank you Netgalley for this eArc in exchange for an honest review.

2,5/5 from me

#filmforher #netgalley

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have been a follower of Orion for a very long time and it is absolutely mesmerizing to see herself revealed in the pages of her books. While Flux was an exploration of heartbreak, one that I admired yet could not relate to, Film for Her felt so personal that it managed to sneak into my mind and make me feel the same way Orion must have felt - she accomplished what she meant. These poems touch on family, belonging, the desperate need for company in a city of lonely souls. Orion writes about her fears as an adult, one we can all find ourselves into. She wonders how she may become a poem, failing to realize she already is one. She writes for generations of lonely hearts, hopeless romantics that seem like misfits in a culture of hookups and passing moments. Film for Her aims directly at the heart and I found myself crying more than once. Sincerity is scary, and she managed to terrify me with the accuracy with which she described these emotions. I hope this won't be the last I read of her, she has a talent for writing poetry that not many authors can achieve in this way.