The Imperial Trace Recent Russian Cinema [Paperback]

The collapse of the USSR seemed to spell the end of the empire, yet it by no means foreclosed on Russia's enduring imperial preoccupations, which had extended from the reign of Ivan IV over four and a half centuries. Examining a host of films from contemporary Russian cinema, Nancy Condee argues that we cannot make sense of current Russian culture without accounting for the region's habits of imperial identification. But is this something made legible through narrative alone-Chechen wars at the periphery, costume dramas set in the capital-or could an imperial trace be sought in other, more embedded qualities, such as the structure of representation, the conditions of production, or the preoccupations of its filmmakers? This expansive study takes up this complex question through a commanding analysis of the late Soviet and post-Soviet period auteurists, Kira Muratova, Vadim Abdrashitov, Nikita Mikhalkov, Aleksei German, Aleksandr Sokurov and Aleksei Balabanov.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Custodian of the Empire
2. Cine-Amnesia: How Russia Forgot to Go to the Movies
3. Mikhalkov: European but Not Western
4. Muratova: The Zoological Imperium
5. Abdrashitov-Mindadze: A Comuunity of Somnambulants
6. Sokurov: Shuffling Off the Imperial Coil
7. German: Forensics in the Dynastic Capital
8. Balabanov: The Metropole's Death Drive
9. Postscript
References
Index

The Imperial Traceis hands down the most thought-provoking book that I have read in quite some time. It is as well (and wittily) written as it is thoroughly researched and skillfully argued, no mean feat given the complexity of the ideas therein. This superb book is essential reading for anyone interested in nations and empire and their cultural manifestations, in Russian cultural politics, and in late Soviet and contemporary Russian film. --Slavic Review

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