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Cinemasaurus examines ninety recent films over three decades, focusing on four issues of
Russiäs transition: (1) its imperial legacy, (2) the film market and new
genres, (3) the dialogue with European values and hierarchies, (4) its
renegotiation with state power. Its
contributors include the next generation of US-Russian cinema scholars.
List of contents
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Stephen M. Norris
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translations
Cinemasaurus: Introduction
Nancy Condee, Alexander Prokhorov, and Elena Prokhorova
Part One. Borders of Imperial Desire
Framing Essay
Nancy Condee
1. Imperial Fatigue: Somnambulants, Ghosts, and Monsters
Olga Kim
2. Empire Reloaded: Sacred Power in a Postmodern Era
Justin Wilmes
3. Russia’s Quiet Other: Dmitrii Mamuliia’s Another Sky and Aleksandr Kott’s The Test
Ellina Sattarova
Part Two. Hilarity and Horror
Framing Essay
Alexander Prokhorov and Elena Prokhorova
4. Laughing Apocalypse: Horror and/as Comedy
Daria Ezerova
5. Eccentricity, Theatricality, and the Grotesque
Robert Crane
6. Privatized Violence in the New Russian Cinema
Denis Saltykov
Part Three. Evropsk or Russia?
Framing Essay
Seth Graham
7. Fragments of Empire: The Heartland in Post-Soviet Film
Zhanna Budenkova
8. Russia on the Margins?
Tetyana Shlikhar
8. Contending Alterities: Drag Show, Roma Camp . . .
Trevor Wilson
Part Four. The Ideological Occult
Framing Essay
Petre Petrov
9. Past, Present, and Posthumous Fathers: Cinepaternity Reloaded
Theodora Trimble
10. New Auteurism: The Case of Mikhalkov and Bekmambetov
Olga Mukhortova
11. Elki: The Most Profitable Franchise of the Putin Era
Beach Gray
Part Five. Interviews
12. The Mediascape: Alexander Rodnyansky (CEO, AR Films, Non-Stop Production)
13. The Festival: Sitora Alieva (Program Director, Kinotavr)
14. The Exhibition Space: Paul Heth (CEO, Rising Star Media; Karo Film Holding)
15. The Film Journal: Birgit Beumers (KinoKultura, UK)
16. The Film Symposium: Vladimir Padunov (Russian Film Symposium, US)
Kino-Grafik
Notes on the Contributors
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Nancy Condee is Director of University of Pittsburgh¿s Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Center, a Title VI Center.
Alexander Prokhorov teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at the College of William & Mary.
Elena Prokhorova teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at the College of William & Mary.
Summary
Examines contemporary Russian cinema as a new visual economy, emerging over three decades after the Soviet collapse. Focusing on debates and films exhibited at Russian and US public festivals where the films have premiered, the volume's contributors examine issues in Russia's transition.
Additional text
“As well as being seen as treasure-/storehouse, Cinemasaurus may be likened to a mosaic, and one in which some of the most scintillating fragments are to be found in the framing essays. Petre Petrov provides a brilliant reading of the reclamation of a defunct space station in the space drama Saliut-7 as allegory of the attempted restoration of the imperial project in recent Russian cinema, while Nancy Condee offers the most intellectually bracing and linguistically vivacious writing in the entire volume in her introduction to the cluster of essays on empire. In its broad intellectual ambition, and in the consistently informed and incisive essays of the young scholars whom she has nurtured, this handsomely produced volume is also a salute to her own inestimable contribution to our understanding of contemporary Russian cinema and society.”
—Julian Graffy, University College London, Russian Review
