Border Crossing: Russian Literature into Film

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Each time a border is crossed there are cultural, political, and social issues to be considered. Applying the metaphor of the 'border crossing' from one temporal or spatial territory into another, Border Crossing: Russian Literature into Film examines the way classic Russian texts have been altered to suit new cinematic environments.
In these essays, international scholars examine how political and economic circumstances, from a shifting Soviet political landscape to the perceived demands of American and European markets, have played a crucial role in dictating how filmmakers transpose their cinematic hypertext into a new environment. Rather than focus on the degree of accuracy or fidelity with which these films address their originating texts, this innovative collection explores the role of ideological, political, and other cultural pressures that can affect the transformation of literary narratives into cinematic offerings.

Reviews

By closely analyzing the complex and multiple ways that classic works of Russian literature have been reimagined at different times and places, in different languages, cultures, genres, and media, the essays in Burry and White's Border Crossing: Russian Literature into Film make a significant contribution not just to Russian Studies but to adaptation studies as well. Focusing on adaptation as 'cross-cultural communication', Border Crossing opens up numerous exciting new avenues for future research by scholars of both literature and film. -- Anthony Anemone, The New School

Author Bio

Alexander Burry is an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Multi-Mediated Dostoevsky: Transposing Novels into Opera, Film, and Drama (2011). Frederick H. White is Professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Utah Valley University. He has published two books on the Russian writer Leonid Andreev; co-edited a selection of essays on the Russian avant-garde; and is the co-author of Marketing Literature and Posthumous Legacies: The Symbolic Capital of Leonid Andreev and Vladimir Nabokov (2013).