We enter a movie theater, find a seat and recline as best we can, waiting to be transported. Transported not only to another place and time, but to the perspective and sensibility of another person. It might be likened to a form of dissociation or, perhaps more positively framed, to a heightening of empathy. We not only roam the world in space and time, but we do it from a perspective only partly our own.

Filmmakers, assigned the task of pulling us in, appeal to our curiosity and our intellect, but also to our emotions, our desires and fears. The premise of the articles in this book...