The intriguing title of Sheila Skaff’s survey of history of cinema in Poland before World War II is taken from a book written by an eye-witness, the critic and film theoretician Karol Irzykowski: “For only half of the world is ruled by the principle of action; the other half is subject to the laws of reflection.” Irzykowski’s understanding of cinema as a visual medium that both reflects and distorts reality, without forcing the audience to interact with it, remains an overarching metaphor throughout Skaff’s work.

This collection of essays, the second in a series entitled Visual and Cultural Explorations (Vizualnye i kulturnye issledovanie), is the product of a conference held at the European Humanities University in Vilnius during April 2003. The forum gathered scholars from Belarus, Lithuania, and England to theorize the terra incognita left uncovered in Russian language scholarly publications on gender representations in visual culture. In particular these authors, according to the introduction by Almira Ousmanova, set out to analyze how gender negotiates borders in visual culture and what this means in the age of a post-modern, post-feminist, post-Soviet world.

Vladimir Paperny’s new book Mos-Angeles Two is a retrospective, nostalgic compilation of writings from the author’s recent and distant past. Revealing personal and professional motivations, describing spaces and feelings both imaginary and real, the introspective approach of his book makes for a highly personal project. Paperny was raised and educated in Moscow and then settled in the U.S. with the “third wave.”