Book review :The cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union

摘要

'The Cinema of the Former Soviet Union', which was published in March, is published by Wallflower Press in their 'Twenty-Four Frames' series and is edited by Birgit Beumers. Beumers specialises in research on contemporary Russian culture, especially theatre and cinema. Twenty-Four Frames mean in this case, twenty-four chapters, dealing with filmmakers from the pre-revolutionary period to the present day. The book runs to 283 pages including an index, filmography and bibliography, listing reference books, cinema under Stalin, glasnost and perestroika, pre-revolutionary cinema etc. There are eighteen contributors covering the twenty-four filmmakers. Each chapter takes a look at a filmmaker and analyses one of their films. Sergei Badrov Sr wrote the preface, and there are twenty-four illustrations, each one before a new chapter. The use of a single black and white picture for each chapter produces a curiously 'dull' layout, with page after page of unbroken text, although there is plenty of white space between the lines.