Tonight’s screening at the Cantor Film Center of State by State, the latest short documentary in Powell’s “Out of the Book” series, should be interesting. Basically, you’ll be going to see editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey introduce a film in which they then introduce nearly twenty writers—including Will Blythe, Charles Bock, Joshua Ferris, Myla Goldberg, Rick Moody, David Rakoff, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and Ellery Washington—at a private reading from this new anthology of essays about each of our United States, loosely inspired by the WPA state guides of the 1930s… and when the film is over, those same authors (plus a few others, we’re told) will take part in a panel discussion about, presumably, things similar to, and providing context for, the things they were filmed reading to each other about.
It’s an entertaining film, though, and does an effective job in its 40-or-so minutes of conveying the emotional range of the anthology, from the footage of Bock reading about his parents’ pawnshop in Las Vegas to the “backstage” discussion between John Hodgman and Heidi Julavits about why she’ll never be a true inhabitant of Maine.
The show starts at 7 p.m.—but, no, as far as we know, Jhumpa Lahiri is not officially in tonight’s lineup. We just like throwing in showtune references at every opportunity.