THE CINEMA OF RUSSIA & THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

This volume explores the cinema of the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, ranging from the pre-Revolutionary period to the present day. It offers an insight into the development of Soviet film, from ‘the most important of all arts’ as a propaganda tool to a means of entertainment in the Stalin era, from the rise of its ‘dissident’ art-house cinema in the 1960s through the glasnost era with its broken taboos to recent Russian blockbusters. Films have been chosen to represent both the classics of Russian and Soviet cinema as well as those films that had a more localised success and remain part of Russia’s cultural reference system. The volume also covers a range of national film industries of the former Soviet Union in chapters on the greatest films and directors of Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian and Armenian cinematography. Films discussed include Strike (1925), Earth (1930), Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Mother and Son (1997) and Brother (1997).

March 2007
288 pages

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Birgit Beumers is Senior Lecturer in the Russian Department at Bristol University. Her publications include Burnt by the Sun (2000) and PopCulture: Russia! (2005).

‘Typically, the Russian volume … avoids, where possible, the too obvious, or too voluminously written-about … Typically, too, the thematic content is rich, if – in the context of ten-page articles – succinct and introductory.’
Wally Hammond, Time Out 

'The analysis of the twenty-four listed films gives the reader a look into the progress of the Soviet film industry. It is lucidly written and imaginative [making] a great addition to other volumes on the subject.'
David A. Ellis, Cinema Technology

‘Rather than a rolling, general account with a few lines on most films and a page at best on the most pivotal, here we see 24 substantial readings of representative movies … The standard of these essays is high, and for the most part the contributions manage to combine close readings of the films with contextual insight into the director, the genre or the cinema of the period.'
Jeremy Hicks, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema