This book features four essays that illuminate the relationship between American and Soviet film cultures in the 20th century. The first essay emphasizes the structural similarities and dissimilarities of the two cultures. Both wanted to reach the masses. However, the goal in Hollywood was to entertain (and educate a little) and in Moscow to educate (and entertain a little). Some films in the Soviet Union as well as in the United States were conceived as clear competition to one another – as the second essay demonstrates – and the ideological opponent was not shown from its most advantageous side. The third essay shows how, in the 1980s, the different film cultures made it difficult for the Soviet director Andrei Konchalovsky to establish himself in the US, but nevertheless allowed him to succeed. In the 1960s, a genre became popular that tells the story of the Russian Civil War using stylistic features of the Western: The Eastern. Its rise and decline are analyzed in the fourth essay.

Acclaimed for its breakthrough approach and its combination of theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, this is the standard work on the classical Hollywood cinema style of film-making from the silent era to the 1960s.

'[The book] shows that nationalist topoi inevitably have anti-transnational implications. [...] Vlad Strukov and Lara Ryazanova-Clarke look at Russian media ecology from the outside - from Latvia and the United Kingdom media ecology. Strukov's contribution conversely elaborates [...] the Russo-national centricity of the international media outlet of the Riga news portal Meduza, which he calls "transnational Russo-centrism".' Dirk Uffelmann, Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie

This innovative volume challenges the ways we look at both cinema and cultural history by shifting the focus from the centrality of the visual and the literary toward the recognition of acoustic culture as formative of the Soviet and post-Soviet experience. Leading experts and emerging scholars from film studies, musicology, music theory, history, and cultural studies examine the importance of sound in Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet cinema from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Addressing the little-known theoretical and artistic experimentation with sound in Soviet cinema, changing practices of voice delivery and translation, and issues of aesthetic ideology and music theory, this book explores the cultural and historical factors that influenced the use of voice, music, and sound on Soviet and post-Soviet screens.

In the 1930s as the capitalist system faltered, many in the United States turned to the political Left. Hollywood, so deeply embedded in capitalism, was not immune to this shift. Left of Hollywood offers the first book-length study of Depression-era Left film theory and criticism in the United States. Robé studies the development of this theory and criticism over the course of the 1930s, as artists and intellectuals formed alliances in order to establish an engaged political film movement that aspired toward a popular cinema of social change. Combining extensive archival research with careful close analysis of films, Robé explores the origins of this radical social formation of U.S. Left film culture. Grounding his arguments in the surrounding contexts and aesthetics of a few films in particular—Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, Fritz Lang's Fury, William Dieterle's Juarez, and Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise—Robé focuses on how film theorists and critics sought to foster audiences who might push both film culture and larger social practices in more progressive directions. Turning at one point to anti-lynching films, Robé discusses how these movies united black and white film critics, forging an alliance of writers who championed not only critical spectatorship but also the public support of racial equality. Yet, despite a stated interest in forging more egalitarian social relations, gender bias was endemic in Left criticism of the era, and female-centered films were regularly discounted. Thus Robé provides an in-depth examination of this overlooked shortcoming of U.S. Left film criticism and theory.

Jorge Luis Borges-one of the most important Latin American writers-has also attained considerable international stature, and his work is commonly cited in a wide array of scholarship on contemporary fiction. Partly as a consequence of Borges' international identity, and partly because of a long-standing view in Borges criticism that his writing is principally concerned with abstract ideas, critics have been reluctant to address the question of politics in his writing Filling this critical gap, Gonzalez begins by rejecting the proposition that Borges withdraws from the "real," and provides a detailed analysis of the various political issues that Borges takes up in his essays and short stories. The author places particular emphasis on the turbulent questions that shaped Argentine social history during the period of Borges' output.

The Cold War was as much a battle of ideas as a series of military and diplomatic confrontations, and movies were a prime battleground for this cultural combat. As Tony Shaw and Denise Youngblood show, Hollywood sought to export American ideals in movies like Rambo, and the Soviet film industry fought back by showcasing Communist ideals in a positive light, primarily for their own citizens. The two camps traded cinematic blows for more than four decades. The first book-length comparative survey of cinema's vital role in disseminating Cold War ideologies, Shaw and Youngblood's study focuses on ten films—five American and five Soviet—that in both obvious and subtle ways provided a crucial outlet for the global "debate" between democratic and communist ideologies. For each nation, the authors outline industry leaders, structure, audiences, politics, and international reach and explore the varied relationships linking each film industry to its respective government. They then present five comparative case studies, each pairing an American with a Soviet film: Man on a Tightrope with The Meeting on the Elbe; Roman Holiday with Spring on Zarechnaya Street; Fail-Safe with Nine Days in One Year; Bananas with Officers; Rambo: First Blood Part II with Incident at Map Grid 36-80. Shaw breathes new life into familiar American films by Elia Kazan and Woody Allen, while Youngblood helps readers comprehend Soviet films most have never seen. Collectively, their commentaries track the Cold War in its entirety—from its formative phase through periods of thaw and self-doubt to the resurgence of mutual animosity during the Reagan years-and enable readers to identify competing core propaganda themes such as decadence versus morality, technology versus humanity, and freedom versus authority. As the authors show, such themes blurred notions regarding "propaganda" and "entertainment," terms that were often interchangeable and mutually reinforcing during the Cold War. Featuring engaging commentary and evocative images from the films discussed, Cinematic Cold War offers a shrewd analysis of how the silver screen functioned on both sides of the Iron Curtain. As such it should have great appeal for anyone interested in the Cold War or the cinematic arts.

Analysing films by established directors such as Sokurov and Zel'dovich, as well as lesser-known filmmakers like Balabanov and Kalatozishvili, this book explores the particular style of film presentation that has emerged in Russia since 2000, characterised by its use of highly abstract concepts and visual language.

This book rediscovers the Hollywood Right, revealing how Hollywood Republicans remade America by successfully backing candidates such as Richard Nixon.

Paul Cooke looks at Hollywood's interaction with national and transnational cinemas, from German Expressionism to Bollywood and Chinese film. While Hollywood has had a huge impact on the medium - doing all the talking in the 'dialogue' - world cinema's economic, aesthetic and political relationship with Hollywood is of profound importance.