Alexander Sokurov's 'Russian Ark' is generally acclaimed as a milestone in cinematography. In this film Sokurov reversed the idea of montage, creating instead the sensation of an uninterrupted flow of time encompassing three centuries of Russia's cultural history through a single, 90-minute take. Yet this film is but one milestone in the work of this versatile director. Since the 1990s, Sokurov's films have had international recognition at film festivals and through foreign distribution. In this, the first English-language book to cover Sokurov's full oeuvre, leading scholars on Sokurov unravel his work on documentaries; his early films and literary adaptations; his trilogy on leaders focussing on the decaying body; his films on passing youth and approaching age; and, of course, 'Russian Ark'. The book also provides samples of the major Russian-language studies of Sokurov's films to provide the reader with an insight into Russian approaches to Sokurov.
One of the last representatives of a brand of serious, high-art cinema, Alexander Sokurov has produced a massive oeuvre exploring issues such as history, power, memory, kinship, death, the human soul, and the responsibility of the artist. Through contextualization and close readings of each of his feature fiction films (broaching many of his documentaries in the process), this volume unearths a vision of Sokurov's films as equally mournful and passionate, intellectual, and sensual, and also identifies in them a powerful, if discursively repressed, queer sensitivity, alongside a pattern of tensions and paradoxes. This book thus offers new keys to understand the lasting and ever-renewed appeal of the Russian director's Janus-like and surprisingly dynamic cinema – a deeply original and complex body of work in dialogue with the past, the present and the future.
In Mythopoetic Cinema, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli explores how contemporary European filmmakers treat mythopoetics as a critical practice that questions the constant need to provide new identities, a new Europe, and with it a new European cinema after the fall of the Soviet Union. Mythopoetic cinema questions the perpetual branding of movements, ideas, and individuals. Examining the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Alexander Sokurov, Marina Abramović, and Theodoros Angelopoulos, Ravetto-Biagioli argues that these disparate artists provide a critical reflection on what constitutes Europe in the age of neoliberalism. Their films reflect not only the violence of recent years but also help question dominant models of nation building that result in the general failure to respond ethically to rising ethnocentrism. In close readings of such films as Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002) and Godard's Notre Musique (2004), Ravetto-Biagioli demonstrates the ways in which these filmmakers engage and evaluate the recent reconceptualization of Europe's borders, mythic figures, and identity paradoxes. Her work not only analyzes how these filmmakers thematically treat the idea of Europe but also how their work questions the ability of the moving image to challenge conventional ways of understanding history.
"In all film there is the desire to capture the motion of life, to refuse immobility," Agnes Varda has noted. But to capture the reality of human experience, cinema must fasten on stillness and inaction as much as motion. Slow Movies investigates movies by acclaimed international directors who in the past three decades have challenged mainstream cinema's reliance on motion and action. More than other realist art cinema, slow movies by Lisandro Alonso, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Pedro Costa, Jia Zhang-ke, Abbas Kiarostami, Cristian Mungiu, Alexander Sokurov, Bela Tarr, Gus Van Sant and others radically adhere to space-times in which emotion is repressed along with motion; editing and dialogue yield to stasis and contemplation; action surrenders to emptiness if not death.
One of the world’s most erudite and entertaining film critics on the state of cinema in the post-digital—and post-9/11—age. This witty and allusive book, in the style of classic film theorists/critics like André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer, includes considerations of global cinema’s most important figures and films, from Lars von Trier and Zia Jiangke to WALL-E, Avatar and Inception.
Analysing films by established directors such as Sokurov and Zel'dovich, as well as lesser-known filmmakers like Balabanov and Kalatozishvili, this book explores the particular style of film presentation that has emerged in Russia since 2000, characterised by its use of highly abstract concepts and visual language.
Casting fresh light on the renowned productions of auteurs like Antonioni, Fellini, and Bresson and drawing out from the shadows a range of important but lesser-known works, Screening Modernism is the first comprehensive study of European art cinema’s postwar heyday. Spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, András Bálint Kovács’s encyclopedic work argues that cinematic modernism was not a unified movement with a handful of styles and themes but rather a stunning range of variations on the core principles of modern art. Illustrating how the concepts of modernism and the avant-garde variously manifest themselves in film, Kovács begins by tracing the emergence of art cinema as a historical category. He then explains the main formal characteristics of modern styles and forms as well as their intellectual foundation. Finally, drawing on modernist theory and philosophy along the way, he provides an innovative history of the evolution of modern European art cinema. Exploring not only modernism’s origins but also its stylistic, thematic, and cultural avatars, Screening Modernism ultimately lays out creative new ways to think about the historical periods that comprise this golden age of film.
Russian Cinema provides a lively and informative exploration of the film genres that developed during Russia's tumultuous history, with discussion of the work of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Mikhalkov, Paradzhanov, Sokurov and others. The background section assesses the contribution of visual art and music, especially the work of the composers Shostakovich and Prokofev, to Russian cinema. Subsequent chapters explore a variety of topics: The literary space - the cinematic rendering of the literary text, from 'Sovietized' versions to bolder and more innovative interpretations, as well as adaptations of foreign classics The Russian film comedy looks at this perennially popular genre over the decades, from the 'domestication' of laughter under Stalin to the emergence of satire The historical film - how history has been used in film to affirm prevailing ideological norms, from October to Taurus Women and Russian film discusses some of the female stars of the Soviet screen (Liubov Orlova, Vera Alentova, Liudmila Gurchenko), as well as films made by male and female directors, such as Askoldov and Kira Muratova Film and ideology shows why ideology was an essential component of Soviet films such as The Maxim Trilogy, and how it was later definitively rejected The Russian war film looks at Civil War and Second World War films, and the post-Soviet treatment of recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Chechnya Private life and public morality explores the evolution of melodramas about youth angst, town and village life, personal relationships, and the emergence of the dominant sub-genre of the 1990s, the gangster thriller Autobiography, memory and identity offers a close reading of the work of Andrei Tarkovskii, Russia's greatest post-war director, whose films, including Andrei Rublev and Mirror, place him among the foremost European auteur film-makers Russian Cinema offers a close analysis of over 300 films illustrated with representative stills throughout. As with other titles in the Inside Film series it includes comprehensive filmographies, a thorough bibliography and an annotated further reading list. The book is a jargon-free, accessible study that will be of interest to undergraduates of film studies, modern languages, Russian language and literature, as well as cineastes, film teachers and researchers.
This unique collection of writings and interviews highlights the important role that cinema can play for understanding Russian history, politics, culture and society in all phases-Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet. "This is the book for the Russian movie aficionado - personal, pointed, funny, frank and full of all kinds of inside stories and political folk tales. It is a fascinating window on Soviet/Russian pop culture that only a cultural Marco Polo and fanatical movie-goer like Louis Menashe would even dare attempt."-Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Russians and The New Russians"Menashe combines an encyclopedic knowledge of Russian history and society of the past 50 years with a broad-ranging and sensitive eye for cinematic meaning and detail."-Anthony Anemone, The New School University"This sparkling collection of film reviews, essays and interviews with filmmakers is a cultural history of Russia over the past 25 years. Highly recommended to everyone interested in Russia and the movies."-Denise J. Youngblood, University of Vermont, and author of Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds."A great national cinema is explored in its myriad colors and textures. Not a traditional history, the book is an archive of insights captured across years of passionate viewing."-Jerry W. Carlson, The City College and Graduate Center CUNY, host of the popular program, "City Cinematheque.""Menashe allows us to see both Russia's present and her past through his crisp, clear and fresh lens of a true expert who loves the country and its films, but always remains critical enough to see their flaws and merits."-Birgit Beumers, University of Bristol
