I was told not to make eye contact with Tom Cruise; is the title of a 2023 article in The Guardian in which Jill Goldston reflects on her sixty-year career as a film extra. She has had dinner with David Bowie, attended the Oscars, and holds a Guinness World Record for the most appearances as a film extra in cinema history, with 1,951 credits to her name. She has been everywhere and, at the same time, nowhere.

This paradox provides the starting point. The figure of the extra is brought to the foreground, shifting our attention towards what exists at the edges, towards what has always been there but has rarely been seen.

The piece asks a simple question: what happens when we turn our attention to what has always remained at the margins? Who decides which bodies occupy the center of the frame, and which are pushed into the background? Rather than offering an answer, I was told creates a space in which to look again at what cinema and perhaps our own ways of seeing has kept out of focus.