Birgit Beumers is Senior Lecturer in the Russian Department at Bristol University. Her publications include Burnt by the Sun (2000) and PopCulture: Russia! (2005).
The latest in Wallflower's excellent 24 Frames series, each of
which examines a national (or regional) cinema by commenting on
two-dozen selected movies. Typically, the Russian volume - edited
by Birgit Bemuers, introduced by Sergei Bordov (Prisoner of the
Mountains) and covering 1916 to the present - avoids, where
possible, the too obvious, or too voluminously written-about: thus
we have Richard Taylor on Eisenstein's Strike rather than
Battleship Potemkin; Natasha Synessios on Tarkovsky's Ivan's
Childhood rather than Andrei Rublev. Typically, too, the thematic
content is rich, if - in the context of ten-page articles -
succinct and introductory.Of the stuff I know, Ian Christie writes
exemplary summations of Lev Kuleshov's influential 1924 agitprop
adventure Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks and Aleksandr
Sokurov's Russian Ark, as does Anthony Anemone of Aleksei German's
long-banned My Friend Ivan Lapshin, but there are equally
interesting and informative pieces on (even) more obscure movies,
from the musical Carnival Night to animations like Norstein's Tale
of Tales. It's obvious that the writers are drawn from the academic
pool, but in the main, they show an enviable ability to address and
appeal to a wider, if still serious, audience.
*Time Out*
An excellent introduction to some of the leading Russian and Soviet
filmmakers and films... Highly recommended.
*Choice*
A welcome and useful contribution... it would make an excellent
textbook for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses in
the history of Soviet and Russian cinema.
*Russian Review*
Valuable supplementary reading... the collection is significant
because it provides an excellent introduction to the cinema of the
former Soviet Union.
*Canadian Slavonic Papers*
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