Movement, Action, Image, Montage: Sergei Eisenstein and the Cinema in Crisis

Description

Luka Arsenjuk considers Sergei Eisenstein as a filmmaker and a theorist, drawing on philosophers such as G. W. F. Hegel and Gilles Deleuze-as well as Eisenstein's untranslated texts-to reframe how we think about the great director and his legacy. A landmark work on an essential filmmaker,Movement, Action, Image, Montagebrings new elements of Eisenstein's output into academic consideration.

Luka Arsenjuk is associate professor of film studies and core faculty member in comparative literature at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"If Eisenstein, his cinema, and his writings sometimes threaten to become invisible, taken-for-granted figures in the history of cinema, Luka Arsenjuk's demanding and articulate polemic returns him and that work to a critical and crucial place in contemporary film culture. This is a book for all film historians and lovers of cinema."-Timothy Corrigan, author of The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker "A uniquely striking work of film theory and historical reflection by one of the most exciting film and critical theorists working today. Movement, Action, Image, Montage is the most important theory of cinematic movement to have emerged since Deleuze's cinema books. The theory of figuration that accompanies this extraordinary conception of movement will not only change the way that we look at Eisenstein but also how we understand cinema and the related arts more generally."-Brian Price, University of Toronto "Movement, Action, Image, Montage is a critical tour de force, combining brilliant close readings of Eisenstein's films, drawings, and major texts with subtle speculative thinking. Its central concept, a 'dialectic of division,' emphasizes not 'organic' synthesis, but the fundamental negativity of Eisensteinian montage and its often-overlooked implications and effects. Drawing on archival material, Luka Arsenjuk succeeds in demonstrating the importance of Eisenstein's thinking to our own critical moment."-Karla Oeler, Stanford University