The Cinema of the Soviet Tha Space, Materiality, Movement [Hardcover]

Following Joseph Stalins death in 1953, the Soviet Union experienced a dramatic resurgence in cinematic production. The period of the Soviet Thaw became known for its relative political and cultural liberalization; its films, formally innovative and socially engaged, were swept to the center of international cinematic discourse. In The Cinema of the Soviet Thaw, Lida Oukaderova provides an in-depth analysis of several Soviet films made between 1958 and 1967 to argue for the centrality of spaceas both filmic trope and social concernto Thaw-era cinema. Opening with a discussion of the USSRs little-examined late-fifties embrace of panoramic cinema, the book pursues close readings of films by Mikhail Kalatozov, Georgii Danelia, Larisa Shepitko and Kira Muratova, among others. It demonstrates that these directors works were motivated by an urge to interrogate and reanimate spatial experience, and through this project to probe critical issues of ideology, social progress, and subjectivity within postStalinist culture.

The Cinema of the Soviet Thawis an exciting contribution to the study of Soviet film, moving the field beyond institutional and historical questions. Likewise, those concerned with the aesthetic, ideological, and other facets of postwar cinemas, should greet it enthusiastically.

Recommended.This book is doubly welcome. First, because it adds substantially to the slender and dispersed literature dealing with film as a spatial medium; and secondly, by offering a corrective to accounts of Soviet cinema that are still too often preoccupied with ideological readings of a limited number of well-known films.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Persistence of Presence: Soviet Panoramic Cinema
2. Mimetic Passages: The Cinema of Mikhail Kalatozov and Sergei Urusevskii
3. The Architecture of Movement: Georgii Danelias I Walk the Streets of Moscow
4. A Walk Through the Ruins: Larisa Shepitkos Wings
5. The Obdurate Matter lS'