He Imperial Trace

The Imperial Trace

The collapse of the USSR seemed to spell the end of the empire, yet it by no means foreclosed on Russia's enduring imperial preoccupations, which had extended from the reign of Ivan IV over four and a half centuries. Examining a host of films from contemporary Russian cinema, Nancy Condee argues that we cannot make sense of current Russian culture without accounting for the region's habits of imperial identification. But is this something made legible through narrative alone-Chechen wars at the periphery, costume dramas set in the capital-or could an imperial trace be sought in other, more embedded qualities, such as the structure of representation, the conditions of production, or the preoccupations of its filmmakers? This expansive study takes up this complex question through a commanding analysis of the late Soviet and post-Soviet period auteurists, Kira Muratova, Vadim Abdrashitov, Nikita Mikhalkov, Aleksei German, Aleksandr Sokurov and Aleksei Balabanov.

Arthouse Crime Scenes

How is crime represented in art cinema? And how can this be understood in the context of global sociopolitical and film-industrial trends? Crime might be shown or lurk only at the edges. It might be left unresolved or unexplained. Arthouse crimes can be petty and small scale or raise big questions associated with the arthouse sector: political issues, the nature of humanity, truth and knowability. Arthouse Crime Scenes is the first book to address the relationship between art cinema and crime, contributing to the study of both categories. Case studies are provided of works by celebrated filmmakers including Lucretia Martell, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Bong Joon Ho, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke, Andrey Zvyagintsez and Lee Chang-dong. Textual analysis is combined with focus on social and industrial contexts. A recurring theme is the situation of arthouse crime films within differing manifestations of broader processes of late-modern neoliberal globalization and cultural hybridity. Approaches examined range from the oblique to social realism and other mixtures of crime and arthouse tendencies.

History of the Laws and Courts of Hongkong. Tracing Consular Jurisdiction in China and Japan and Including Parliamentary Debates, and the Rise, Progress, and Successive Changes in the Various Public Institutions of the Colony from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. With Illustrations