The Cinema Of Soviet Kazakhstan 1925 1991

This monograph traces the history of Kazakh filmmaking from its conception as a Soviet cultural construction project to its peak as fully-fledged national cinema to its eventual re-imagining as an art-house phenomenon. The author’s analysis places leading directors—Shaken Aimanov, Abdulla Karsakbaev, Sultan-Akhmet Khodzhikov, Mazhit Begalin—in their sociopolitical and cultural context.

This monograph traces the history of Kazakh filmmaking from its conception as a Soviet cultural construction project to its peak as fully-fledged national cinema to its eventual re-imagining as an art-house phenomenon. The author's analysis places leading directors--Shaken Aimanov, Abdulla Karsakbaev, Sultan-Akhmet Khodzhikov, Mazhit Begalin--in their sociopolitical and cultural context.

Central Asia often evokes images of imperial power rivalry dating back to the 19th century. Yet as the region’s international politics becomes more complex in the age of globalization, the need for new ways of looking at its many actors is more pressing than ever. Today even the traditional great powers rely increasingly on subtle forms of influence to augment their military might and economic clout in order to achieve their objectives in Central Asia. Bearing this in mind, Soft Power in Central Asia examines the patterns of attraction and persuasion that help shape the political choices of countries in the region. Starting with an investigation of soft power projection by the US, Russia and China, it sheds light on normative transfer and public diplomacy of the European Union, Turkey and Israel, and concludes with a discussion of the Central Asian republics’ active stance in the competition for the hearts and minds. Containing original chapters contributed by leading experts in the field, the volume will appeal to scholars and professionals with interest in international relations, political science and Central Asian studies.

Shawn McHale explores why the communist-led resistance in Vietnam won the anticolonial war against France (1945-54), except in the south. He shows how broad swaths of Vietnamese people were uneasily united in 1945 under the Viet Minh Resistance banner, all opposing the French attempt to reclaim control of the country. By 1947, resistance unity had shattered and Khmer-Vietnamese ethnic violence had divided the Mekong delta. From this point on, the war in the south turned into an overt civil war wrapped up in a war against France. Based on extensive archival research in four countries and in three languages, this is the first substantive English-language book focused on southern Vietnam's transition from colonialism to independence.

One hundred years of Soviet cinema? How is this possible, if the USSR itself lasted barely seven decades before its spectacular demise in 1991? How can we speak of the continued existence of Soviet cinema in the quarter-century since this apocalyptic event? But from Battleship Potemkin to The Colour of Pomegranates, from Man with a Movie Camera to Stalker, from The Cranes Are Flying to Hard to be a God, cinema from the "sixth of the world" covered by the Soviet Union continues, indefatigably, to exist. Firstly, because films made during the era of Communist rule are still with us, even well after the social and political framework in which they were realised has perished. And secondly, because, even to this day, the history of the USSR looms large in the cinema of Russia and the other former Soviet republics, as contemporary filmmakers engage in the vast project of digesting the tragic history of the Soviet experiment. The centenary of the October 1917 Russian revolution, when under Lenin's leadership the Bolsheviks established the world's first proletarian state, was marked by a major dossier on Soviet cinema in the Australian online film journal Senses of Cinema. This book is an augmented version of that dossier, collecting more than sixty articles on Soviet and post-Soviet films arranged in chronological order, and represents the first collaboration between Senses of Cinema and The Leda Tape Organisation.

This volume explores the cinema of the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, ranging from the pre-Revolutionary period to the present day. It offers an insight into the development of Soviet film, from 'the most important of all arts' as a propaganda tool to a means of entertainment in the Stalin era, from the rise of its 'dissident' art-house cinema in the 1960s through the glasnost era with its broken taboos to recent Russian blockbusters. Films have been chosen to represent both the classics of Russian and Soviet cinema as well as those films that had a more localised success and remain to date part of Russia's cultural reference system. The volume also covers a range of national film industries of the former Soviet Union in chapters on the greatest films and directors of Ukrainian, Kazakh, Georgian and Armenian cinematography. Films discussed include Strike (1925), Earth (1930), Ivan's Childhood (1962), Mother and Son (1997) and Brother (1997).

This collection is a multidisciplinary examination of modern-day Kazakhstan. It analyzes the country’s fast-changing national identity, the current regime’s ongoing quest for popular support, relations between the Kazakh majority and the Russian-speaking minorities, and various other issues.

A stimulating and unusually wide-ranging collection of essays overviewing ways in which music functions in film soundtracks.