Journal of Film, Radio, and Television "A work of fundamental importance."--Julian Graffy, Recent Studies of Russian and Soviet Cinema.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception Yuri Tsivian examines the development of cinematic form and culture in Russia, from its late nineteenth-century beginnings as a fairground attraction to the early post-Revolutionary years. Tsivian traces the changing perceptions of cinema and its social transition from a modernist invention to a national art form. He explores reactions to the earliest films, from actors, novelists, poets, writers, and journalists. His richly detailed study of the physical elements of cinematic performance includes the architecture and illumination of the cinema foyer, the speed of projection and film acoustics. In contrast to standard film histories, this book focuses on reflected images: rather than discussing films and film-makers, it features the historical film-goer and early writings on film. Early Cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception presents a vivid and changing picture of cinema culture in Russia in the twilight of the tsarist era and the first decades of the twentieth century. Tsivian's study expands the whole context of reception studies and opens up questions about reception relevant to other national cinemas.

Essays on “how motion pictures in the first two decades of the 20th century constructed ‘communities of nationality’ . . . recommended.” —Choice While many studies have been written on national cinemas, Early Cinema and the “National” is the first anthology to focus on the concept of national film culture from a wide methodological spectrum of interests, including not only visual and narrative forms, but also international geopolitics, exhibition and marketing practices, and pressing linkages to national imageries. The essays in this richly illustrated landmark anthology are devoted to reconsidering the nation as a framing category for writing cinema history. Many of the 34 contributors show that concepts of a national identity played a role in establishing the parameters of cinema’s early development, from technological change to discourses of stardom, from emerging genres to intertitling practices. Yet, as others attest, national meanings could often become knotty in other contexts, when concepts of nationhood were contested in relation to colonial/imperial histories and regional configurations. Early Cinema and the “National” takes stock of a formative moment in cinema history, tracing the beginnings of the process whereby nations learned to imagine themselves through moving images.

Ivan The Terrible (1944/46) was envisaged by its director, Sergei Eisenstein as a trilogy. But, Eisenstein died before begining the third part. Part One had been a resounding success, winning a Stalin prize, but Part Two met with the Kremlin's disfavour and was eventually banned until 1958. Using research gathered from Soviet archives, Yuri Tsivian offers an insight into Eisenstein's grand project. He reconstructs the director's 'mental film' that underlies the finished work. The book attempts to follow the train of thought that connect the aesthetic construction and visual design of the film to Eisenstein's knowldege of iconography and painting, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Shakespeare and Balzac - and much more.

Summary: Defamiliarisation or ostrannenie, the artistic technique of forcing the audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar, ihas become one of the central concept of modern artistic practice, ranging over movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre, and science fiction, as well as our response to arts. Coined by the Soviet literary critic Victor Shklovskii in 1917, ostrannenie has come to resonate deeply in film studies, where it entered into dialogue with the French philosopher Derrida's concept of differance, bordering on 'differing' and 'deferring'. Striking, provocative and incisive, the essays of the distinguished film scholars in this volume recall the range and depth of a concept that since 1917 changed the trajectory of theoretical inquiry.