A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood
Edited with text by Zoe Beloff. Text by Hannah Frank, Esther Leslie.
A World Redrawn is an exploration by the artist Zoe Beloff of Sergei Eisenstein and Bertolt Brecht’s experiences in Hollywood in the 1930s and ‘40s, what their time in Hollywood meant to them then and what it might mean to us now. Beloff focuses on two unrealized films written during this time: “Glass House” by Eisenstein and “A Model Family” by Brecht.
The book reproduces many important and little-known documents from the period, including a large selection of previously unpublished drawings by Eisenstein discovered by Beloff in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow and facsimile reproductions of the writings of Eisenstein and Brecht as they contemplate the politics and culture of Hollywood.
Beloff created three films in connection with this project and the book includes stills and screenplays for these projects and links so that the films can be watched online. Two scholarly essays have been commissioned for this project: an essay by Hannah Frank on the affinities of American and Soviet animation during this period and a meditation on the role of laughter in the work of Bertolt Brecht by the Walter Benjamin scholar Esther Leslie.
Featured image is reproduced from 'A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Brooklyn Rail
Anastasiya Osipova
[T]wo great Marxist directors are conjured as if they were our neighbors in the collective dwelling house of imagination…. as much a meditation on the concrete history of these radical artists’ attempt to subvert the powers of Hollywood to serve the socialist cause as an invitation to establish a sympathetic connection between them and today’s struggle to find a way to be at home while negotiating the powers of surveillance, market speculation, and spectacle.
Film Comment
Michael Joshua Rowin
In the entirety of A World Redrawn, Beloff does justice to ambitious, inchoate political art by highlighting its equally playful and intellectual sensibilities, all the while emphasizing its uncanny ability to speak across time to our current troubling realities.
FORMAT: Hbk, 7.75 x 9.75 in. / 152 pgs / 70 color / 62 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $35.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $47.5 GBP £30.00 ISBN: 9780977869688 PUBLISHER: Christine Burgin AVAILABLE: 9/27/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood
Published by Christine Burgin. Edited with text by Zoe Beloff. Text by Hannah Frank, Esther Leslie.
A World Redrawn is an exploration by the artist Zoe Beloff of Sergei Eisenstein and Bertolt Brecht’s experiences in Hollywood in the 1930s and ‘40s, what their time in Hollywood meant to them then and what it might mean to us now. Beloff focuses on two unrealized films written during this time: “Glass House” by Eisenstein and “A Model Family” by Brecht.
The book reproduces many important and little-known documents from the period, including a large selection of previously unpublished drawings by Eisenstein discovered by Beloff in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow and facsimile reproductions of the writings of Eisenstein and Brecht as they contemplate the politics and culture of Hollywood.
Beloff created three films in connection with this project and the book includes stills and screenplays for these projects and links so that the films can be watched online. Two scholarly essays have been commissioned for this project: an essay by Hannah Frank on the affinities of American and Soviet animation during this period and a meditation on the role of laughter in the work of Bertolt Brecht by the Walter Benjamin scholar Esther Leslie.
