Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost / Edition 1

by Michael Brashinsky, Andrew Horton

Overview

This collection brings together twenty-three essays by some of Russia's most astute commentators on film and culture, written during the 1980s and published here in English for the first time. Included are reviews of films such as Little Vera and Taxi Blues, which were critically hailed in the West. Their comments illuminate important aspects of Russian filmmaking during this decade and capture a sense of a society in flux during the waning years of communism, as well as conveying the larger context within which Glasnost cinema and culture developed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521444750
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/30/1994
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Film
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Part I: Films in a Shifting Landscape: 1. Cinema without cinema Mikhail Yampolsky; 2. Cinema for every day Yuri Bogomolov; 3. The last romantics Alexander Timofeevsky; 4. Jobless prophets Lev Karakhan; 5. Midseasonal anarchists Marina Drozdova; 6. The most avant garde of all parallel ones Sergei Dobrotvorsky; Part II. Glasnost's Top Ten: 7. Repentence: on the road that leads to the truth Tatyana Khloplyankina; 8. Between the circus and the zoo Igor Aleinikov; 9. Is it easy to be young; is it easy to be grown up? Lev Anninsky; 10. Deafening voids Alexander Kiselev; 11. A forgotten tune for the flute, Scherzo - suite - nocturne Alexander Timofeevsky; 12. The cold summer of '53 Mikhail Trofimenkov; 13. Birds of passage Mikhail Trofimenkov; 14. Assa; The tenderest shroud Alexander Timofeevsky; 15. Commissar Maya Turovskaya; 16. Little Vera: forward, singing Tatyana Moskvina; 17. Days of eclipse: out of bounds Victor Bozhovich; 18. The days of eclipse Maya Turovskaya; 19. The world as a mirror for the other world Mikhail Yampolsky; 20. A billion years before the end of cinema Tatyana Moskvina; 21. The needle: a dandy of the postpunk era Marine Drozdova; 22. Taxi blues: forgiveness Pyotr Shepotinnik; 23. Taxi fares, blues fans and film viewers Sergei Lavrentiev; Conclusion; Notes on the Contributors; Directors' Bio-filmography; Filmography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Brashinsky and Horton have done it again...the work consists of 23 essays, which are sometimes witty, sometimes trenchant, and always replete with the requisite amount of Eastern European irony...teachers, students, and film buffs will find much of interest here." J. M. Curtis, Choice

"...not only presents the views of Soviet critics on the glasnost movies, it also casts light on film criticism as a type of active and assertive social behavior....a useful tool." Dina Iordanova, Slavic and East European Journal

From the Publisher