ReFocus: The Films of Kira Muratova

Irina Gradinari is Junior Professor of Gender Studies in Literary and Media Studies at the FernUniversität in Hagen. Her research interests include feminist theories of the gaze, genre and intersectionality, popular culture and cultural memory studies. Her publications include: Feministische Blicktheorien und ihre Folgen (2024); digital:gender – de:mapping affect. Eine spekulative Kartografie (2025, co-edited with Julia Bee and Katrin Köppert), (Re-)Visionen: Epistemologien, Ontologien und Methodologien der Geschlechterforschung (2025, co-edited with Ksenia Meshkova and Stephan Trinkaus) and Staatsgenres: Zur politischen Dimension von Filmgenres (2025, co-edited with Michael Niehaus) Irina Schulzki is the Publishing Director of the open-access journal Apparatus: Film, Media, and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research spans film and gesture, fan fiction, theories of the comic, phenomenology and media, Mikhail Shishkin’s prose and the cinema of Kira Muratova. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters and edited several volumes and special issues, including “Mise en geste: Studies of Gesture in Cinema” (Apparatus 5, 2017; with Ana Hedberg Olenina) and Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen (2024; with Heleen Gerritsen). She is currently completing the co-edited collection Cinéfemmes: Women’s Cinema of the New Millennium (with Irina Gradinari; 2026) and a monograph, A Cinema of Gesture: Kira Muratova and the Poetics of the Moving Image.

• Introduction: ‘People Don’t Like to Look at This’: The Ex-Cinema of Kira MuratovaIrina Schulzki and Irina GradinariPart I. Rebellion of Form1. Late Style in Kira Muratova’s Eternal ReturnIvan Sokolov2. Neither Narrate nor Describe: Kira Muratova’s Non-Totalising Art of CollageIrina Denischenko3. Formalism and Defamiliarisation: A Study of Self-Reflective Form in Kira Muratova’s Film AestheticsVera Kotelevskaya4. ‘A Different Rhythm of Breathing’: Brevity in Muratova's OeuvreEugénie ZvonkinePart II. Reframing Gender5. Gender Axiology in Soviet Cinema and Kira Muratova’s Early FeaturesNikolai Poselyagin6. Gaze and Affect: The Asthenic SyndromeIrina Gradinari7. Reading Muratova’s Aesthetics through FashionMarina RojavinPart III. Community and Ethics Reimagined8. An Ethics of Gesture in Muratova’s CinemaIrina Schulzki9. Kira Muratova’s LikenessesLida Oukaderova10. The Screen as Cage: Dismantling the Human-Animal Divide in The Sentimental PolicemanRaymond De Luca11. The Art of Deception: Genre, Attunement, and Intention Attribution in The TunerDavid G. MolinaPart VI. Interlacements and Contexts12. Through the Looking-Glass Water: Ex-Centric Visions in Muratova and ParajanovOlha Briukhovetska13. Dysphonia as an Art Practice: Muratova, Tarkovsky, GogoberidzeLilya Kaganovsky14. Loss of Control in Auteur Film: Agnès Varda and Kira MuratovaMichael Niehaus15. Performatism of Language in the Films of Kira Muratova and Herbert AchternbuschIlja Kukuj16. Kira Muratova in the Ukrainian Cinematic Process: Perspectives from National Film ScholarshipLarysa NaumovaIndex

Restless, dissonant, and formally radical, the films of Kira Muratova resist easy interpretation. This volume brings together leading scholars to explore aesthetic, political, and philosophical dimensions of her work, addressing questions of affect, gender, gesture, gaze, defamiliarization, perceptual disruption, Muratova’s position between auteur cinema and art practice, as well as the ethical and political stakes of her cinema. Moving across films, themes, and theoretical approaches, the volume reveals Muratova as one of the most original artists of her time.