Poetic Cinema Research Articles

Creative use of objects as signs in cinema: an analysis of Sergei Parajanov’s Hakob Hovnatanyan

The paper presents an analysis of Sergei Parajanov’s short film, Hakob Hovnatanyan (1967), and its significance as an example of poetic cinema within Soviet cinematography. Not only feature-length films of Parajanov, but also his short films hold an important place among his œuvre, as a multi-modal and multi-channel visualization of the past. Hakob Hovnatanyan is a prime example of poetic cinema in Soviet cinematography. A pioneer in this discourse in the Soviet Union was Andrei Tarkovsky with his film Andrei Rublev (1966). Examples of this discourse include the Parajanov’s films The Color of Pomegranates (orig. Nṙan gowynë, 1969), Arabesque on a Theme of Pirosmani (orig. Arabeskebi Pirosmanis temaze, 1985), and Etudes on Vrubel (orig. Etyudy on Vrubel, 1989), which was directed by Leonid Osyka (scriptwriter Parajanov). The paper explores Hakob Hovnatanyan as a converter of cultural memory and multimodal vehicle for the construction of the spirit of the city. While in the framework of the short film the city is presented in the open air, in the middle the interior, the everyday life, the hum of language, and the language of clothes and necklaces of Old Tbilisi, Georgia, are presented. The interior and spirit are presented not only on the visual level of paintings, carpets, and furniture (a dresser with a metronome) but also through auditory elements: sound, language, music, etc. Thus, through a multimodal visualization of the past Parajanov presents a new language of cinema (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (orig. Tini zabutykh predkiv, 1965), The Color of Pomegranates, The Legend of Suram Fortress (orig. Ambavi suramis tsikhisa, 1985), Ashik Kerib (orig. Ashik’-keribi, 1988, first director Dodo Abashidze)).

Traces of Post-Soviet revolution poetic cinema in the films of Sergei Loznitsa

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the post-war documentaries ‘The Train Stop’, ‘Landscape’, and ‘Portrait’, which reflect the aftermath of the Post-Soviet revolution, through the lens of Brecht’s Aesthetics of Alienation. Combining elements of poetic cinema and Brechtian aesthetics, these films engage the viewer intellectually while depicting the societal and human impact of post-Soviet destruction. Loznitsa’s documentaries invite critical reflection, highlighting the legacies of the Soviet era and prompting a reconsideration of historical and contemporary issues. Through visual storytelling, they offer a critical perspective on resilience and societal transformation following political upheaval.

The Meaning of Poetic Cinema in Poetic Documentaries: A Focus on Kilchong Ha’s UCLA Master’s Thesis

The Meaning of Poetic Cinema in Poetic Documentaries: A Focus on Kilchong Ha’s UCLA Master’s Thesis

The Current Discourse of the New Biographism in the Contemporary Cinema

The article is devoted to the actual problems of the biographical genre in cinematography. This genre arose at the very beginning cinematography and developed in the 1920s. However, the first classic examples of it were created in England in the mid-1930s by Alexander Corda (in particular — «Rembrandt»).Soon, the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany began to actively use it with varying degrees of success. We can see the paradoxical flowerishing genre in the 1950s when it underwent final academisization and codification, but lost touch with real life (despite some successes, par example, the film «Taras Shevchenko» by Ihor Savchenko). The follow years demonstrate a variety of undividual options, both in the works of artists of «poetic cinema» («Dream» by Volodymyr Denysenko) and artists of late modernism («Dante`s Inferno» by Ken Russel, «Portrait of Rembrandt» by Jos Stelling). For the first time, artists of naïve direction (Pirosmani, Chontvari) become heroes of feature films. But the genre really changes already at the turn of the century. It draws attention to artists with disabilities, marginals, representatives of national and sexual minorities. A typical example is Frida Cahlo, a heroine at least three films. Finally, the image of female artist — a dissident (Alla Gorska in «Forbidden» by Roman Brovko) or a simple village woman (Katerina Bilokur in «Mad Woman» by Victor Vasylenko) appears in Ukrainian cinema. And even in the realm classics, the most popular characters remain artists with victim fate: Van Goht, Modigliani, Goya, and again Rembrandt. We have, of course, Taras Shevcenko.

The Intensive-Image and the Poetic Film Tradition: Notes on Ruiz, Deren, Pasolini, Buñuel and Deleuze

This article analyses an important category from Deleuze's philosophy – the notion of intensity – and explores its significance for Deleuze and the ways it can be used to think about poetic cinema. I use the concept of the intensive-image to define a cinematic style that dissipates narrative action in favour of more contemplative and sensory experiences, hence films that are able to turn onscreen reality into purely affective phenomena. The notion of intensity, I argue, does not allow us to reply easily to the question about representation (i.e., “what is the film about?”), mainly because its images are indeterminate and flowing, combined in a multiple manner that excludes any simple reduction to signification. The general argument that follows, illustrated by a careful reading of key poetic texts, is that the focus on the intensive-image inspires readers to reconsider Deleuze's classification of the cinema into two separate periods as well as to understand the ways in which intensity finds expression in films that produce problems, displacements and provocations. In the words of Pasolini, this is the poetic film tradition which must be placed diachronically in relation to the language of the film narrative, a diachronism that, he says, would appear destined to be always more pronounced. In the last section of this article, I look at Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) as an early case of the poetic image and draw on key theorists and filmmakers who have discussed the cinema's power of affection and intensity.

Contemporary Ukrainian Visual Culture on the Way to the International Cultural Space

The article is devoted to the visual culture of Ukraine since independence. It pays special attention to the trends and phenomena of contemporary Ukrainian visual culture that have entered the context of world culture through recognition on international cultural platforms (competitions, festivals, biennials, etc.). The considerations concern the development of various trends in contemporary Ukrainian art, which use various artistic media: photography, installation, performance and film. In particular, Ukrainian conceptual photography was the most interestingly represented by several generations of photographers of the Kharkiv School, who combined radical bodily imagery and social criticism. The Ukrainian installation is represented by the works of artists of the REP (Revolutionary Experimental Space) group, which is focused on the unity of art and politics and considers artistic creation as a political act. An interesting sub-direction of the installation is the video installation, which delivers an original combination of contemporary Ukrainian artists with site-specific art and artistic means of reflecting on the traumas inflicted on Ukrainian society by the war. The article pays special attention to the development of contemporary Ukrainian cinema. The author demonstrates the connection between the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers and the traditions of Ukrainian poetic cinema. In addition, other trends in Ukrainian cinema are identified: the experimental search for a new film language, the development of documentary cinema, on top of the convergence of fiction and non-fiction artistic languages in the work of contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers. The dominant issues of contemporary Ukrainian films selected for screening at leading European film festivals are identified: inclusiveness, reflection on Ukrainian history, war trauma, psychological rehabilitation of combatants, etc.

In search of beauty: Anticipating the ‘new Renaissance’ of Italian cinema: Interview with Lora Guerra

Lora Guerra (Eleonora Yablochkina) was an Italian writer and screenwriter Tonino Guerra’s wife and collaborator. She worked as a translator for a few films produced by her husband with Russian filmmakers, and today she is the curator of Tonino Guerra’s Memorial House in Pennabilli (Rimini). In this interview, she discusses the problems of cinema during the COVID-19 pandemic, the relationship between Italian and Russian cinema, the historical role of Italian cinema and the future of film festivals in Italy. She also reflects on the connection of neorealism with the Italian artistic tradition in literature, theatre and fine arts, on the importance of the ‘word’ as the basis of a screenplay and on the importance of visual and sound images in poetic cinema (both fiction and documentary). Lastly, Lora Guerra reveals details about the production of the documentary Tempo di viaggio (Voyage in Time) filmed in Italy by Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra in summer 1979 and released in 1983.

Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz

March 29 2023 Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz. by Laleen Jayamanne. Amsterdam University Press: Amsterdam, NL, 2021. 178 pp. Trade. ISBN: 978-9463726245. Will Luers Will Luers The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program, Washington State University Vancouver. Email: wluers@gmail.com. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Will Luers The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program, Washington State University Vancouver. Email: wluers@gmail.com. Online ISSN: 1530-9282 Print ISSN: 0024-094X © ISAST2023ISAST Leonardo 335–337. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02395 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Will Luers; Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz. Leonardo 2023; doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02395 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsLeonardo Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © ISAST2023ISAST Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

시적인 영화를 통한 영상 매체 시대의 시 교육

시적인 영화를 통한 영상 매체 시대의 시 교육

Review: Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars, by Jill Godmilow

Review: <i>Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars</i>, by Jill Godmilow

А. А. Тарковский: время, запечатленное в кадре

S. Eisenstein considered editing the main semantic element of the film. S. Eisenstein and A. Tarkovsky attached importance to intra-frame editing, time inside the frame. According to A. Tarkovsky, cinema is a “captured time”. He attached great importance to the “atmosphere” of the film, which arises in time. In his opinion, the director, creating a film, cuts off everything unnecessary from the “block of time”, so there should be no time gap between the gluing. A. Tarkovsky considered the chronicle an ideal form of cinema. A. Tarkovsky is considered to be a representative of “poetic”, “poetic-picturesque”, “poetic-documentary” cinema. Echoes of poetic cinema are visible in “Ivanovo Childhood”, but after A. Tarkovsky spoke about the danger of “poetic cinema”, which consists in the fact that it gives birth to symbols, allegories that have nothing to do with the imagery inherent in cinema. Editing cinema, Tarkovsky believed, sets riddles and puzzles for the viewer, makes him enjoy allegories, appeals to the intellectual experience of the viewer. At the same time, each of these riddles has an accurate guess. S. Eisenstein believed that any cinema is editing. A. Tarkovsky did not consider editing to be the main formative element of the film. Time as a form is closest to a musical work, therefore, to create a full-fledged film drama, you need to study the form of musical works: fugues, sonatas, symphonies, etc. The main formative element of the film A. Tarkovsky considered the rhythm, which is composed of temporary tension within the frames. He considered the question of time to be the main and cornerstone.

Ethnography, Incongruity, History: Soviet Poetic Cinema

AbstractThis essay examines the entangling of the poetic and the ethnographic in the art cinema of the 1960s as an indicator of a broader collision of epistemological/discursive regimes in postwar Soviet cinema—and ultimately, a clash between two fundamentally opposed approaches to the discursive production of history. In the Soviet poetic cinema of the 1960s, the temporal‐spatial frameworks of the Stalin era are disrupted, shifting first of all, to what Tarkovsky called a lived experience of time—that is, to the subjective emotions and experiences of individual people; second, to localized histories that may not coincide with the supra‐national Soviet developmental narrative; and third, to the positing of an archaic, even pre‐historical temporality as a kind of lost ideal. I argue that poetic cinema serves as a site for playing out the contradiction among temporalities and spatialities in post‐Stalin culture, and therefore among opposed sense‐making projects and representational modes, creating the possibility for subverting the colonial function of Soviet cinema.

TOWARDS SOCIAL CINEMA: EXTENDING OF RIGA POETIC STYLE IN THE 1970s

In the 1960s, a group of young and very gifted documentary filmmakers established themselves at Riga Film Studio and developed a poetic style, based on visual metaphors which they named themselves as Riga Style but later in the Soviet and East European context the style and its creators came to be known as Riga Poetic Documentary Film School. Yet in the 1970s one can identify pronounced focusing by the documentary filmmakers on social issues, the aspirations to offer in their films analysis of the problems existing in the society and sometimes offering their solution without losing the artistic qualities of the films. The article written in 1971 by Armīns Lejiņš, the script writer and theorist of the poetic cinema, “Poetic Cinema + Scientific Cinema = Social Cinema” can be perceived as their manifesto. Lejiņš was convinced that by combining poetry and science, Riga documentary filmmakers could facilitate henceforth logical, analytical and dialectical thinking culture in their films. Within the framework of my article, I’ll provide a broader insight into the social angle of films by Latvian documentary filmmakers, into their thematic and aesthetic aspects, and also offer a more detailed analysis of the film “The Woman We Expect?” (Sieviete, kuru gaida?, 1978) – the concept, the process of its making, relations with censorship and its reception.

Poetic cinema: a genealogy of the ‘poetic’ in Soviet and post-Soviet critical discourse

ABSTRACT The term ‘poetic cinema’ is common in Russo-Soviet critical discourse, but has meant different things at different times. This article demonstrates how ‘poetic cinema’ has two overlapping, but nonetheless distinct meanings: on the one hand, according to Russian Formalism, the term ‘poetic’ connotes a defining feature specific to art; on the other hand, it implies an expressive mode characterised by elevation from a concrete reality and commonly ascribed to poetry. The meaning of ‘poetic’ oscillated between the ‘formalist’ and ‘elevated’ senses over the course of Soviet history, whilst the latter meaning has been adapted in varying historical conditions. The article explores these changing meanings of ‘poetic cinema’; the parallels and divergences between the poetic cinema of the 1920s and the 1960s; the use of the terms ‘poetic cinema’ vs. ‘auteur cinema’; and the overlap between ‘poetic’ and ethno-national cinemas during the late 1960s and 70s. The ambiguities of the term ‘poetic cinema’ in Russo-Soviet critical discourse at different ‘thaws’ and ‘freezes’ in Soviet cultural history point to a repressed ‘other’ behind the realist mandate that dominated Soviet cinema and culture.

Research of Historical and Cultural Factors of S. Paradzhanov’s Creative Work

The purpose of this article is to study the historical and cultural factors of the emergence, formation, and development of the brilliant personality of Sergei Paradzhanov through the lens of his life and creative path, to analyze the role of Ukraine in becoming an outstanding film director, his contribution to Ukrainian and world cinema. The research methodology is to apply historical, cultural, empirical, general-logical methods for the analysis of creativity and social activity of S. Paradzhanov. The scientific novelty of the work lies in a comprehensive study of the various stages of biography and creative achievements, the public activity of S. Paradzhanov, his contribution to the revival of Ukrainian poetic cinema. Conclusions. The work clearly sets out the biographical accents of Sergei Paradzhanov’s life, explores the formation of pro-Ukrainian aesthetics and worldview of the Master, his public position, details his creative achievements, the influence of his work on the modern generation of cinematographers. The creativity of S. Paradzhanov opened the floodgates of national consciousness, made the contribution to the revival of lost traditions, raised the importance of each person to a new level.

The “Space Between”: Pasolini’s Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo and the Mediation of Scripture

Abstract Rooted in Italian neorealism, Marxist theory, and centuries of Christian art and music, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il Vangelo secondo Matteo reactivates the Gospel against the backdrop of Italian Marxism and social life in the mid-twentieth century. Through a hermeneutical reflection, this paper argues for the film as a central moment in the mediation and reception of the Christian story. Pasolini’s transgressive and poetic cinema partakes in and expands a hermeneutical dynamic at the core of the Christian story. The film’s documentary style, political subtexts, and eclectic setting highlight how the Christian story is a lived historical experience and thus does not transcend the social or historical circumstances of its telling and retelling. In a reciprocal encounter, both film and Gospel reveal the Christian story’s multiple textuality. Taking this as its cue, this article explores how Pasolini’s Matthew reveals the role of cinema as a site of hermeneutical and Christological reflection.

Folklore Traditions in Ukrainian Cinematography of 1960–1970s: Historiography of the Soviet Period’s Problem

The purpose of the article is to study historiographical sources on the problems of the poetic cinema of the period when the USSR (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) was a part of the united states-political formation – the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The methodology of the study allowed us to use the following methods: historical, adductive (cognitive), systemic, comparative-analytical. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is a comprehensive substantiated scientific position on historiographical sources on the problems of the poetic cinema of the period, which was characterized by the presence of rigid authoritarian censorship. Conclusions . The historiography of the period has been researched, the problem is represented by a large number of film studies, and it has been proved that the poetry of the majority of film works was achieved due to various stylistic elements. The practical significance of the obtained results is conditioned by the possibility of using actual historical and methodological material to comprehensively comprehend the problems of domestic film studies of the mid-twentieth century.

The Kharkiv actresses Polina Kumanchenko and Lidiya Krynytska in the image of a mother in the films “Human’s blood is not water”, “Dmytro Horytsvit”, “People don’t know the all” and “Lymerivna”

The Kharkiv actresses Polina Kumanchenko and Lidiya Krynytska in the image of a mother in the films “Human’s blood is not water”, “Dmytro Horytsvit”, “People don’t know the all” and “Lymerivna”

Sergei Paradjanov: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by First Joshua (review)

REVIEWS 553 Igor´ Stravinskii’s debt to — and departure from — the example of his teacher does not merely restate conclusions already famously advanced by Taruskin and others, but takes the particular case study of Stravinskii’s work on a performing edition of Khovanshchina for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in which the younger composer managed to navigate between the creative influences of both Musorgskii and Rimskii-Korsakov. Lida Adler carries the debate into the early Soviet period, arguing that Rimskii-Korsakov’s example as both a pedagogue and a composer profoundly influenced artistic practice after the October Revolution. As is customary with the Bard Music Festival series, this volume is rounded off with a wide-ranging essay by Leon Botstein with offers a panoramic survey of Rimskii-Korsakov’s place in late imperial Russia and suggests that despite his longstanding interest in ‘lyricism and poetic beauty’ (p. 305), the composer was imbricated in many of the most urgent intellectual and ideological debates of the age. Rimskii-Korsakov and His World is to be welcomed not just for the many riches within it, but for its implicit call to continue the work of reconsidering the composer to whom it is so devoted. There are, after all, fifteen operas to be studied, as well as ‘dozens of wonderful songs, chamber music, and various orchestral pieces beyond Sheherazade’ (p. viii). Wadham College, University of Oxford Philip Ross Bullock First, Joshua. Sergei Paradjanov: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. KinoSputnik, 2. Intellect, Bristol and Chicago, IL, 2016. xix + 64 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. £20.00: $28.50 (paperback). Sergei Paradjanov, in Joshua First’s assessment, ‘was and remains a mysterious figure’; this despite the fact that ‘he became a film-maker of global significance’ (p. 1). First is correct on both counts. Despite the considerable literature on Paradjanov, much of it admittedly of marginal quality, research remains to be undertaken on Pardjanov’s upbringing in Tbilisi; his years as a film student in Moscow (at VGIK); and importantly on his ‘national’ or ethnographic films in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Paradjanov’s years as a director in Kiev (at Dovzhenko Studios) is, however, well covered in film scholarship. There is no adequate biography of Paradjanov. James Steffen’s study (The Cinema of Sergei Paradjanov, Madison, WI, 2013) is a noteworthy survey of the vicissitudes of Pardjanov’s overall career as a Soviet filmmaker. First’s previous monograph (Ukrainian Identity: Belonging and Identity during the Soviet Thaw, New York, 2014) does much to situate Paradjanov within an attenuated SEER, 97, 3, JULY 2019 554 Ukrainian cultural rebirth in the late mid to late 1960s. Both Steffen and First delineate the development of ‘poetic cinema’ and Paradjanov’s seminal role in that ‘movement’. Even so, it has proven challenging to decipher with any precision either the literary or cinematic influences on Paradjanov that shaped his oeuvre. Following more than a decade making (largely) forgotten genre films in Ukraine, Sergei Paradjanov directed four splendid ‘national’ films, each one rich in complex, often undecipherable, symbolism and ethnographic imagery: the Ukrainian Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors/Tini zabutykh predkov (1965); the Armenian The Color of Pomegranates/Tsvet granata (1968); the Georgian The Legend of Surami Fortress/Legenda o Suramskoi kreposti (1984), and lastly Ashik Kerib (1988) in Azerbaijan. Whatever the effect of the other films on cinematicaudiences,FirstastutelyobservesthatShadowsofForgottenAncestors ‘represented a golden age for Ukrainian and other non-Russian cinema, and it was largely based on the influence of this one film’ (p. 1). First’s useful companion volume to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is wellillustrated with a brief plot summary; a table listing the film’s production credits; an introduction of sorts to Paradjanov (chapter 1); a consideration of the ‘historical context’ in which the film was produced (chapter 2); thoughtful analyses of the film’s ten chapters (chapter 3); and concludes with an assessment of the film’s reception in 1965-66 and its afterlife since then (chapter 4). Why the film became totemic in Ukrainian film history is rather as mysterious as the director who ushered it through the complex labyrinth that was Ukrainian/ Soviet filmmaking. Loosely based on Mykhailo Kotsiubyns’kyi’s 1912 novella of the same name, Shadows of Forgotten...

Arloŭ , Uladzimir Hierasimovič , Źmicier Belarus. The Epoch of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: An Illustrated History (review)

REVIEWS 555 Mykolaichuk’s casting as Ivan, the reception for the film was lukewarm in 1965, at least outside of a segment of the Ukrainian cultural intelligentsia. As one disenchanted cinemagoer wrote, ‘for the first time in my life, I saw spectators, not by themselves, but in rows, who got up and left’. The film’s celebrated status in Ukrainian cinematic history then may be ascribed to its apparent espousal of an emergent Ukrainian nationalism. Depsite Paradjanov’s elliptical references to preserving ‘national colour’ in the film (p. 49), his cinematic work arguably displays no affinity to nationalism in any form. Except, perhaps, that rarest of belief systems, Soviet nationalism. Disputes about the existential meaning of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors were conducted within the framework of hermetic 1960s debates about how to define ‘poetic cinema’ and ‘national cinema’. As First argues, these discussions were ‘filled with allusions to the great conflict between formalism and socialist realism during the early 1930s’ (p. 45). Although these debates now have a decidedly musty aura, the film remains. First concludes his work by pointing, tantalizingly, to the films continuing influence over present day, and presumably future, filmmakers (p. 58). We shall see. Department of History Steven A. Usitalo Northern State University Arloŭ, Uladzimir and Hierasimovič, Źmicier. Belarus. The Epoch of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: An Illustrated History. Translated by Jim Dingley. Technalohija, Minsk, 2018. 407 pp. Illustrations. Chronology. BYR55.00. History is particularly important in Belarus, a country which has been described variously as denationalized (David Marples) and the last dictatorship in Europe (Condoleezza Rice), and where history constantly needs to be asserted and reasserted in order not to be crudely distorted or forgotten. Few have been more active in this Sisyphean task than Uladzimir Arloŭ, author of numerous historical novels and illustrated books aimed at raising the national consciousness of adults and their children. The role of Hierasimovič in this handsome volume was to design the layout of the many illustrations (some of which were made by him) amongst the texts and other materials. In many ways this book is a successor to Arloŭ’s earlier Kraina Bielaruś (Bratislava, 2012) translated by Jim Dingley as This Country Called Belarus (Bratislava, 2013); it is immense in scope: from the Bronze age via the medieval period to the early twentieth century. The translation from the original Belarusian is both fluent and accurate, although the spelling of some of the names of places and people in the Belarusian rather than the SEER, 97, 3, JULY 2019 556 familiar manner could startle some readers who had not read the translator’s explanatory note (p. 4). Nationally conscious Belarusians regard their country as the successor state to the misleadingly named Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereafter GDL). The principal basis for this claim lies in language and culture, for the state documents of the GDL were written in what linguists regard as Middle Belarusian; indeed, when Muscovy engaged in negotiations with this flourishing state, they requested interpreters to accompany the GDL’s delegation. This is a highly informative as well as extensively and handsomely illustrated volume comprising seventy sections from Slavs and Balts to Belarusians in modern Lietuva (aka Lithuania). It is not possible to name all the sections, and difficult to pick out individual ones, although the second offers a lucid introduction to the part played in the medieval period by the early Belarusian principalities, Polacak (Arloŭ’s native city), Smaliensk (now claimed by Russia), Turaŭ (soon to include Pinsk and Bieraście) and, obviously related to these early states, religion and culture. The last section on Belarusians in modern Lietuva, amongst other things, shows how important the city of Viĺnia (Vilnius as the capital of Lithuania) was to Belarusians in the late renaissance and the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. During the book as a whole the importance of this city for Belarusians emerges very clearly indeed. The aim of the book under review is to persuade and inform, and to this end it is well supplied with a list of the key historical personalities, as well as a series of valuable chronologies to accompany many of the sections, thus allowing the commentaries...