EPILOGUE is a lyrical student documentary about the future of books by Hannah Ryu Chung, featuring a number of interviews with independent bookstore owners, magazine art directors, printers, bookbinders, letterpress artists, and other champions of bibliophilia. The conversation, though beautifully cinematic, bespeaks the classic deficiency of the same old print vs. digital debate — earnest enthusiasm and genuine passion for the printed page, but underpinned by stubborn reductionism of digital possibility and a certain self-importance. There is practically no exploration of how the love of printed books can, and does, live and thrive online — this isn’t a world in which our only choice is how to read, pitting analog vs. digital; it’s a world in which the more urgent and important choice is the one we’ve always faced: what to read and, above all, why to read. Increasingly, these decisions are being made online, whether their end objects manifest in bits or atoms.

Print, since 1886 — which would be Otto Mergenthaler invents the linotype — between here and now, the history of print has been all about change.

[ … ]

I feel like the central role of the bookseller has not changed: The central role of the bookseller is curatorial and I feel, if anything, the intervening years have increased that role in terms of importance.” ~ Brian Morgan, Walrus Magazine

The film’s Flickr stream is a treasure trove of book candy: