Academic Studies Press Cinemasaurus: Russian Film in Contemporary Context (Film and Media Studies Series)

Cinemasaurus 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―the new generation of US scholars studying Russian cinema―examine four issues of Russia’s transition: (1) its imperial legacy, (2) the emergence of a film market and its new genres, (3) Russia’s uneven integration into European values and hierarchies, (4) the renegotiation of state power vis-à-vis arthouse and independent cinemas. An introductory essay frames each of the four sections, with 90 films total under discussion, concluding with a historical timeline and five interviews of key film-industry figures formative of the historical context. Review “Cinemasaurus carefully traces a nuanced picture of multiple, often contradictory, tendencies in Russian film today. It looks equally to the past and future; and it investigates features both little and large, both peripheral and imperial. For these reasons, the editors and contributors are to be congratulated alike. Ideally suited to cinema survey classes, Cinemasaurus will offer clarity to both students and scholars, and it will prompt substantial future research.” ―David MacFadyen, University of California, Los Angeles, Studies in European Cinema “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 Review “This is one of the most exciting books on contemporary Russian cinema out there. It brims with bold conceptual innovations, including the notion of exploring its subject through three key institutions that have mediated our experience of it: the Kinotavr Film Festival; the journal KinoKultura, and the annual Pittsburg Film Symposium. Eschewing conventional categorizations of that subject in terms of periods, socio-cultural themes or genres, it offers a new prism through which to view it―one based on visual practices resonant with patterns and tensions which provide the reader with a navigation tool likely to remain productive for decades. Above all, Cinemasaurus gives a platform to twelve highly promising younger scholars whose brilliant insights are framed by short essays penned by some of the very best names in the field. Together they succeed brilliantly in explaining the sense of strange familiarity that Russian films frequently elicit in their anglophone audiences.” ―Stephen Hutchings, Professor of Russian Studies, University of Manchester About the Author Alexander Prokhorov teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at The University of William & Mary. Elena Prokhorova teaches at Russian and Film Studies Programs at The University of William & Mary.