The Films of Kira Muratova

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Edited by Irina Gradinari and Irina Schulzki

Type

Studies

Subject

Director > Kira Muratova

Keywords

Kira Muratova, director, Russia

Publishing date

2026 (July 30, 2026)

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Collection

ReFocus: The International Directors Series

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 328 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-3995-4570-9

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Book Presentation:
Spanning six decades, her seventeen features and four shorts move from the late Soviet era to post-Soviet Ukraine, breaking cinematic rules with repetition, collage, unruly performance and a tactile, object-rich world. This volume reframes Muratova as an autrice working from the margins and proposes ‘ex-cinema’ as a central concept in her radical practice at the edges of language, genre, and empire.

Across four parts, leading and emerging scholars examine form and style, gender and queer aesthetics, ethics and community and Muratova’s dialogues with European cinema. Attending to decolonial questions, feminist perspectives, and the politics of visibility, the volume shows how her films unsettle canons and centres while tracing the collective artistry behind them.

​​​​​​​It offers an accessible, interdisciplinary guide to a singular filmmaker and fresh scholarship for students, researchers and cinephiles.

About the authors:
Irina Gradinari is Junior Professor of Gender Studies in Literary and Media Studies at the FernUniversität in Hagen. Her research interests include feminist theories of the gaze, genre and intersectionality, popular culture and cultural memory studies. Her publications include: Feministische Blicktheorien und ihre Folgen (2024); digital:gender – de:mapping affect. Eine spekulative Kartografie (2025, co-edited with Julia Bee and Katrin Köppert), (Re-)Visionen: Epistemologien, Ontologien und Methodologien der Geschlechterforschung (2025, co-edited with Ksenia Meshkova and Stephan Trinkaus) and Staatsgenres: Zur politischen Dimension von Filmgenres (2025, co-edited with Michael Niehaus)Irina Schulzki is the Publishing Director of the open-access journal Apparatus: Film, Media, and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research spans film and gesture, fan fiction, theories of the comic, phenomenology and media, Mikhail Shishkin’s prose and the cinema of Kira Muratova. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters and edited several volumes and special issues, including “Mise en geste: Studies of Gesture in Cinema” (Apparatus 5, 2017; with Ana Hedberg Olenina) and Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen (2024; with Heleen Gerritsen). She is currently completing the co-edited collection Cinéfemmes: Women’s Cinema of the New Millennium (with Irina Gradinari; 2026) and a monograph, A Cinema of Gesture: Kira Muratova and the Poetics of the Moving Image.

Press Reviews:
Restless, dissonant, and formally radical, the films of Kira Muratova resist easy interpretation. This volume brings together leading scholars to explore aesthetic, political, and philosophical dimensions of her work, addressing questions of affect, gender, gesture, gaze, defamiliarization, perceptual disruption, Muratova’s position between auteur cinema and art practice, as well as the ethical and political stakes of her cinema. Moving across films, themes, and theoretical approaches, the volume reveals Muratova as one of the most original artists of her time. ― Oksana Bulgakowa, Professor of Film Studies at the Gutenberg University in Mainz

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

See the complete filmography of Kira Muratova on the website: IMDB ...