Notebook, the biannual cinema magazine from MUBI, explores film, art and culture through criticism, interviews and visual essays. Issue 9, Smoke and Mirrors, examines the intertwined histories of magic and cinema, from supernatural beliefs to stage illusions and cinematic tricks.

Highlights include Orson Welles’s foreword to Bruce Elliott’s 1948 magic manual; Mark Leckey and Stephen Ryley revisiting the nineteenth-century Pepper’s Ghost illusion; a conversation among four women filmmakers about magic in their work; and Adam Nayman on Nathan Fielder’s fascination with revealing the mechanisms behind his performances.