Daria Ezerova writes and teaches on the cinema and culture of postsocialism, with a focus on Russia. She is currently completing a book, Derelict Futures, about how visions of history after the collapse of the USSR are enfolded in representations of space and built environment in film. The way that art mediates thinking about the present and future is an abiding interest in her scholarship, which also takes in such eclectic elements as abandoned steel mills, theories of neoliberalism, and horror movies. A recent article, “Biopolitics and the Cinema of Extremes” brought together French New Extreme, Romanian New Wave, and Russian cinema under Putin, analysing how representations of the body across different national cinemas register shared dissatisfactions with hegemonic neoliberalism.
A recipient of the Harriman Institute postdoctoral fellowship, she has been published in Slavic Review, Russian Review and Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. Her writing for a wider audience has appeared in Senses of Cinema, Apparatus, and KinoKultura. Since 2017, she has been president of the Working Group on Cinema and Television of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Her childhood was spent between Moscow and the Carpathian Mountains in Western Ukraine during the first decade of capitalism in the former Eastern Bloc (think Britney Spears and the Spice Girls). Before coming to Cambridge, she taught at Vassar and Columbia, where she became a native of New York City by elective affinity. You can find a selection of her film reviews for a wider audience below.
Published Works:
Book Manuscripts
Derelict Futures: Cinema and Space in Post-Soviet Russia (in preparation).
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Biopolitics and the Cinema of Extremes,” The Russian Review, Volume 82, Issue 1 (January 2023).
“Shifting Peripheries: The Case of Russian Symbolism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.” The Slavic Review, Volume 78, Issue 2 (Summer 2019).
Editor-Selected Articles
“Russian Global.” A round-table on visual studies. Ed. Serguei Oushakine. The Russian Review.
“Watching the Unwatchable: DAU.” Special issue: Soviet Playtime: Architectures of Power and Profligacy in DAU. Eds. Philip Cavendish, Natascha Drubek, and Irina Schulzki. Apparatus, Volume 14 (2022).
“Filming Death at Work: Aleksei Balabanov’s Unreleased Script for Clay Pit.” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Volume 11, Issue 1 (2017).
“Me, Too: Between Fantastic and Magic Realism” (“Ya tozhe khochu”: mezhdy fantasticheskim i magicheskim realizmom.) Balabanov. Perekrestki. Sankt-Peterburg: SEANS (2017).
“The Defense: Nabokov’s Exploration of Surrealism.” Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in the USA, Volume XXXVIII (Festschrift for Vladimir Alexandrov, 2013).
Chapters in Edited Volumes
“Not all Nudes Are Sexy.” In Sexuality and Nudity in Soviet and Russian Cinema, eds. Alexandre Bedenko, Birgit Beumers, Catherine Géry, Eugénie Zvonkine. Routledge (forthcoming).
“Laughing Apocalypse: Horror and/as Comedy in Contemporary Russian Cinema.” In Cinemasaurus: Russian Film in Contemporary Context, 1991-2016, eds. Nancy Condee, Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova. Academic Studies Press (2020).
“‘A Bomb Into the Lap of Mother Russia’: Vasiliy Pichul’s Little Vera (1988).” In One Hundred Years of Soviet Cinema (Senses of Cinema), ed. Daniel Fairfax. The LedaTape Organization (2019).
Academic Translations
“Clay Pit. A Film About Bad People.” Film script by Aleksei Balabanov. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Volume 11, Issue 1 (2017).
“Vadim Abdrashitov’s workshop: a place for discipline, a place for art.” Article by Lilya Nemchenko. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Volume 13, Issue 2 (2019).
Film Reviews and On-line Publications
“Gerda” (2021). Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 77 (July 2022).
“Chicks” (Chicki, 2019). Film Review. Slavic Review, Volume 80 (Summer 2021).
“Masha” (Masha, 2021). Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 74 (October 2021).
Interview with Michael Idov. Harriman Magazine, Volume 7, Number 2 (Fall 2020).
“Text” (Tekst, 2019). Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 69 (July 2020).
“Longing For Future: Understanding 90s Nostalgia.” Harriman Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1 (Spring 2020).
“Russian Symbolism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.” All the Russias’ Blog, NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia (October 15, 17, 2019).
“Kinotavr Turns Thirty: Surprises, Growing Pains, and Adulteries.” Film Festival Review. KinoKultura, Issue 65 (July 2019).
“The Factory” (Zavod, 2018). Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 65 (July 2019).
“Not Strangers (Clay Pit)” (Ne chuzhie, 2018) Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 62 (October 2018).
“Prague Spring at 50.” Cover story for ASEEES NewsNet, Volume 58, n.3 (June 2018).
“Closeness” (Tesnota, 2017).” Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 60 (April 2018).
“Fade From Red: The Cold-War Ex-Enemy in Russian and American Film, 1990-2005, Helena Goscilo, Margaret B. Goscilo.” Book Review. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Volume 10, Issue 3 (2016).
“The Cinematic Discomfort of Kinotavr 2016.” Film Festival Review. KinoKultura, Issue 53 (July 2016).
“Pioneer-Heroes” (Pionery-geroi, 2015). Film Review. KinoKultura, Issue 50 (October 2015).
