Eleanor Rees received her PhD in January 2020 from University College London (UCL), UK, and has a BA and MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK. Her doctoral research was funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Design History Society. She has written ‘Comfort and the Domestic Interior in Early-Soviet Cinema of the 1920s’ in Pat Kirkham and Sarah Lichtman (eds), Interiors: Film and Television (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

• Introduction 1. The Early-Russian Production Artist: Design, Creativity and Technology I. Professional Backgrounds and Artistic TrainingII. Collaborative Partnerships and Studio PracticesIII. Roles and Responsibilities: From the Film Decorator to the Film Architect2. The Rural ProvincesI. The Russian Landscape and the Search for a Native CinemaII. Ethnographic Authenticity in late-Imperial CinemaIII. Transforming the Rural Environment: The Enchantment of Infrastructure and Technology in early Soviet Cinema3. The Domestic Interior I. The House as Entrapment: The Domestic Interiors of Boris Mikhin and Evgenii BauerII. The House as Ornament: Objects and the Desiring Gaze in late-Imperial CinemaIII. The House as Shelter: Material and Psychological Comfort in 1920s Soviet Cinema4. The Workplace I. The Private Study in Evgenii Bauer’s Films: Individual Desire and Power RelationsII. Fantasy and the Everyday Reality of Labour: Aelita (1924) and The Overcoat (1926)III. Cinematic Expressivity and Pleasure in the Industrial Workplace, from Engineer Prait’s Project(1918) to Golden Mountains (1931)5. In the Studio and on the Stage I. The Painter’s AtelierII. Cinema Studios and AuditoriumsIII. The Circus ArenaConclusion Selected Bibliography FilmographyAppendix

Rees’s history is not just a rehabilitation of forgotten filmmakers but is also a needed adjustment to the mythologies by which we imagine the processes of early filmmaking. It is a highly valuable resource for research and teaching, and no doubt will appeal to scholars of cinema beyond the Russian and Soviet space.