The Imperial Trace

Nancy Condee is on the Slavic and Film Studies faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. She has been Director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies for over a decade (1995-2006) and is a Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College (Oxford University). She is co-founder and co-editor of the journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, and serves on a number of editorial and advisory boards, including Kinokultura, Critical Quarterly, and Russian Studies in Literature. She is a member of the Russian Guild of Cinema Scholars and Critics (Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation) and is one of two US scholars annually for over a decade invited to and supported by the Kinotavr Film Festival (Sochi), Russia's leading post-socialist film festival. She has served for six years as Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the largest US grant agency for social-science research in the former socialist bloc.

• List of illustrations ; Acknowledgements ; 1. Introduction: Custodian of the Empire ; 2. Cine-Amnesia: How Russia Forgot to Go to the Movies ; 3. Mikhalkov: European but Not Western ; 4. Muratova: The Zoological Imperium ; 5. Abdrashitov-Mindadze: A Comuunity of Somnambulants ; 6. Sokurov: Shuffling Off the Imperial Coil ; 7. German: Forensics in the Dynastic Capital ; 8. Balabanov: The Metropole's Death Drive ; 9. Postscript ; References ; Index

The Imperial Trace is hands down the most thought-provoking book that I have read in quite some time. It is as well (and wittily) written as it is thoroughly researched and skillfully argued, no mean feat given the complexity of the ideas therein. This superb book is essential reading for anyone interested in nations and empire and their cultural manifestations, in Russian cultural politics, and in late Soviet and contemporary Russian film.