Ian Christie’s ‘Down to earth: Aelita relocated’, Denise Youngblood s ‘The return of the native: Yakov Protazanov and Soviet cinema’, and J.Hoberman’s ‘A face to the shtetl: Soviet Yiddish cinema, 1924–36’ were written specially for this volume.
Yuri Tsivian’s piece on ‘Early Russian cinema: some observations’ was written specially for this collection and is a considerably expanded version of ‘Some Preparatory Remarks on Russian Cinema’, in Yuri Tsivian et al. (eds), Silent Witnesses. Russian Films, 1908–19 1 9 (London and Pordenone: 1989), pp. 24–43. It was translated from the Russian by Richard Taylor.
Mikhail Yampolsky’s ‘Kuleshov’s experiments and the new anthropology of the actor’ has been slightly expanded from ‘Les expériences de Kuleshov et la nouvelle anthropologie de l’acteur’, which first appeared in Iris, vol. 4, no. 1 (1986), pp. 25–47. It was translated from the Russian by Richard Taylor.
Vance Kepley’s ‘Intolerance and the Soviets: a historical investigation’ is a slightly revised version of the article that appeared in Wide Angle, vol. 3, no. 1 (1979), pp. 22–7. The Russian prologue to Intolerance was first published by Viktor Listov in Iz istorii kino, no. 9 (Moscow: 1974), pp. 188–91, and is here translated from the Russian by Richard Taylor from a draft by Betty and Vance Kepley. ‘The origins of Soviet cinema: a study in industry development’ first appeared in Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1985), pp. 22–38, and is published here with minor revisions.
Bernard Eisenschitz’s ‘A fickle man, or portrait of Boris Barnet as a Soviet director’ is a revised version of ‘Un homme léger, ou Boris Barnet en metteur-en-scène soviétique’, which appeared in: F.Albera and R. Cosandey (eds), Boris Barnet. Ecrits. Documents. Etudes. Filmographie (Locarno: 1985), pp. 174–93, and is here translated from the French by Ian Christie.
Alexander Medvedkin was interviewed by the late Martin Walsh and the Swedish researcher Kate Betz at the FIAF Congress in Varna, Bulgaria, in June 1977 and again by Richard Taylor at Dom kino, Moscow, in March 1985. Richard Taylor has translated, condensed and annotated both interviews from the Russian.
Ian Christie’s ‘Making sense of early Soviet sound’ is a revised version of the article which first appeared as ‘Soviet Cinema: Making Sense of Sound’ in Screen, vol. 23, no. 2 (July/August 1982), pp. 34–49.
Richard Taylor’s ‘Ideology as mass entertainment: Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet cinema in the 1930s’ is a slightly revised version of the article which first appeared in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 6, no. 1 (1986), pp. 43–64.
The editors and contributors are grateful to the above-mentioned for the necessary copyright permissions.