"A beautiful meditation on the machines that make us see. In this book, Yue shows us how they help us realize ourselves. The train is like a river serpent moving through our mind. It brings us together in a shared, hypnotic heartbeat."-- Apichatpong Weerasethakul A journey through cinema's railways, exploring trains as sites of desire, encounter, and imagination From the Lumière brothers' legendary locomotive to today, trains have shaped the language and imagination of film. In Trains , Genevieve Yue offers an original and evocative meditation on this enduring cinematic motif, charting how railways have served not only as engines of narrative momentum but as spaces of reflection and quiet transformation. The book moves across a range of filmic genres and geographies, paying particular attention to the experience of being a woman on a train. With a feminist politics in mind, Yue explores romances, reveries, and encounters with strangers alongside reflections on infrastructure, ecology, and state power.

Movement through space becomes movement through memory, fantasy, and thought. Written with clarity and wit, Trains invites readers aboard a richly idiosyncratic itinerary through film history. It offers a critical and uniquely personal way of encountering one of cinema's most storied tropes: the sensations and stories of travel by rail. Genevieve Yue is Associate Professor of Culture and Media and Director of Screen Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School.