ENG / RUS
140×215 (60×90/16) paperback, ill., 480 pp., 2011 ISBN 978‑5‑86793‑902‑1
World rights available
In this voluminous piece of research the cinema critic Zara Abdullaeva considers a new state of affairs in art practise in the 2000s, when the boundary between fact and invention has transformed from being conditional to being non-existent. The fact has broken free of the boundaries of the documentary and has become an agent of action and an independent and distinctive screen (or stage) character. Abdullaeva considers this transitional space of interexchange between the fictional and the documentary in cinema, theater, literature and photography, and her findings will be of interest to both specialists and those unconnected to the worlds of film and theater. It is also thought-provoking to apply Abdullaeva’s concept to literature, and a relatively large text is devoted to the prose of Sergei Dovlatov. The book also includes Abdullaeva’s discussions with famous and novice directors and writers working in the experimental field of the genre borderlands.
Zara Abdullaeva is a Russian film critic and cinema researcher. Has been wrighting for most important Russian periodicals. Working now for the well-known periodical Cinema Art. Zara Abdullaeva is also the author of the book on Russian film director Kira Muratova.
It is scientific but also literature... it is best to read Postdoc as complex narrative prose. There are interpenetrating motifs, unexpected turns, a whimsical setup and a carefully thought-out structure in which fiction/documentary are conceptually mixed at the level of chapter titles: After the Novel, After the Interview, After the Production, After the Trauma, After Life, After Death, After Poetry, After the Underground.
Oleg Zintsov,
Vedomosti
This is a particularly useful book. It is as useful as a map is useful in an unknown load. It is as useful as the inscription “Homeless person and supermarket trolley” is useful when you need to spend the night in a museum. It is as useful as the sign “Careful, blind people” is useful where for the moment there are blind people.
Varvara Smurova,
OpenSpace
After the distance between the artist and the document has been recognized and taken to its polemical extreme the reverse process begins. The essence of this process lies in the attempt to return language to the artist, but this language has already been freed and invigorated with the anonymity of the document.
