The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo

← Hot Shoe Archive

The Film StageCinema

The Complete Kubrick: The Killing, Paths of Glory, and Spartacus

10.30

In celebration of Criterion’s The Complete Kubrick , we’re publishing a season of features dedicated to the filmmaker’s oeuvre and beyond, going through Criterion’s box set era by era and disc by…

Read at The Film Stage ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

The Complete Kubrick: The Killing, Paths of Glory, and Spartacus

More from The Film Stage on Hot Shoe

CinemaNew to Streaming: If I Go Will They Miss Me, American Doctor, Filipiñana, Ali G: Who Iz I? & More The Film Stage

CinemaNYC Weekend Watch: Female Possession, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Shining International Cut & More The Film Stage

CinemaEverytime Teaser: Sandra Wollner’s Unforgettable Cannes Winner Sets February Release The Film Stage

CinemaPaweł Pawlikowski on Fatherland, Watching Sandra Hüller Act, and Going Against the Grain of Modern Filmmaking The Film Stage

CinemaThe Best Movies Now Playing in Theaters The Film Stage

CinemaQueen at Sea Review: Tom Courtenay and Juliette Binoche Lead Thorny Moral Dilemma The Film Stage