ReFocus: The Films of Larisa Shepitko
Will be published approx. on 30. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
291 pages
978-1-3995-2404-9 (ISBN)
Description
Despite the brief span of her directorial career, lasting from 1963 to 1979, the Soviet Ukrainian director Larisa Shepitko produced a remarkable body of work, one that received an expansive national and international attention and led her to winning the Golden Bear Awards at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1977. Refocus: The Cinema of Larisa Shepitko is the first volume in English to offer a comprehensive, methodologically diverse analysis of Shepitko's oeuvre, demonstrating the ongoing significance of her work for filmmakers and scholars alike. The book not only considers the emergence of Shepitko's cinema within Soviet political and cultural history but examines its continued relevance for thinking about such pressing contemporary issues as war and trauma, history, memory and subjectivity, and ecology and the environment.
Reviews / Votes
"This timely, wide-ranging volume is the first collection of scholarly essays in English on the Ukrainian Soviet filmmaker Larisa Shepitko. Historically grounded while also engaging with contemporary theory, it shows that the concerns Shepitko explored remain profoundly relevant today. An invaluable contribution to Soviet, global and women's cinema studies." -- Rachel Morley, University College London, UKMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
40 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
425 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-2404-9 (9781399524049)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lida Oukaderova is an Associate Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Art History at Rice University in Houston, USA, and the author of The Cinema of the Soviet Thaw: Space, Materiality, Movement.
Content
Introduction - Lida Oukaderova
Part One. Late Socialism: Cinema, Ideology Subjectivity
Chapter 1. Larisa Shepitko at VGIK and in Soviet and Post-Soviet Archives and Press - Nina Sputnitskaya
Chapter 2. Larisa Shepitko, Aleksei German, and the Trials and Tribulations of Post-Thaw Soviet Filmmaking - Tim Harte
Part Two. Intermediality: From Word to Image
Chaptee 3. Ghosts of the Present Past: The Wings (1966), From the Script by Natalia Riazantseva and Valentin Ezhov to the Film by Larisa Shepitko - Eugenie Zvonkine
Chapter 4. The Ordeal and the Ascent - Karla Oeler
Part Three. The Materiality of Moving Images
Chapter 5. The Revolutionary Past as Environment: Rain, Dust, and Faces in The Homeland of Electricity - Viktoria Paranyuk
Chapter 6. The Senselessness of the Heroic Act and the Experience of War in The Ascent - Elizabeth A. Papazian
Part Four. Time, Memory, Temporality
Chapter 7. White on White and The Black Square: Shepitko's The Ascent, Stan Brakhage, and Cinematic Abstraction - Anne Eakin Moss
Chapter 8. Liquid Time: The Homeland of Electricity as Unprocessed Trauma - Lilya Kaganovsky
Part Five. Landscape and Environment
Chapter 9. Methods of Conquest: Larisa Shepitko's Heat, Soviet Russian Colonialism, and the Representation of Virgin Lands Campaign in Soviet Cinema of the 1950s-60s - Zdenko Mandusic
Chapter 10. Larisa Shepitko's Ecologies - Lida Oukaderova
Chapter 11. The Shepitko Sky: Larisa Shepitko's Meteorological Cinema of Immersion, Wonder, and Openness - Raymond De Luca
Part Six. Shepitko in Post-Soviet Cinema
Chapter 12. The White, the Black, and the Gray: The Problem of Choice in Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent and Sergei Loznitsa's In the Fog - Sergey Toymentsev
Part One. Late Socialism: Cinema, Ideology Subjectivity
Chapter 1. Larisa Shepitko at VGIK and in Soviet and Post-Soviet Archives and Press - Nina Sputnitskaya
Chapter 2. Larisa Shepitko, Aleksei German, and the Trials and Tribulations of Post-Thaw Soviet Filmmaking - Tim Harte
Part Two. Intermediality: From Word to Image
Chaptee 3. Ghosts of the Present Past: The Wings (1966), From the Script by Natalia Riazantseva and Valentin Ezhov to the Film by Larisa Shepitko - Eugenie Zvonkine
Chapter 4. The Ordeal and the Ascent - Karla Oeler
Part Three. The Materiality of Moving Images
Chapter 5. The Revolutionary Past as Environment: Rain, Dust, and Faces in The Homeland of Electricity - Viktoria Paranyuk
Chapter 6. The Senselessness of the Heroic Act and the Experience of War in The Ascent - Elizabeth A. Papazian
Part Four. Time, Memory, Temporality
Chapter 7. White on White and The Black Square: Shepitko's The Ascent, Stan Brakhage, and Cinematic Abstraction - Anne Eakin Moss
Chapter 8. Liquid Time: The Homeland of Electricity as Unprocessed Trauma - Lilya Kaganovsky
Part Five. Landscape and Environment
Chapter 9. Methods of Conquest: Larisa Shepitko's Heat, Soviet Russian Colonialism, and the Representation of Virgin Lands Campaign in Soviet Cinema of the 1950s-60s - Zdenko Mandusic
Chapter 10. Larisa Shepitko's Ecologies - Lida Oukaderova
Chapter 11. The Shepitko Sky: Larisa Shepitko's Meteorological Cinema of Immersion, Wonder, and Openness - Raymond De Luca
Part Six. Shepitko in Post-Soviet Cinema
Chapter 12. The White, the Black, and the Gray: The Problem of Choice in Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent and Sergei Loznitsa's In the Fog - Sergey Toymentsev