Bed and Sofa

The latest volume to be added to the straining virtual shelves of the Bioscope Library is Judith Mayne’s Kino and the woman question: feminism and Soviet silent film, first published in 1989, and now made freely available ponline by Ohio State University Libraries’ Knowledge Bank. The book is a study of Soviet silent films in terms of their understanding of the position of women within socialist culture. The argument is made that the representation of women in such films subverted their ostensibly straightforward ideological and cinematic goals. The films given particular analysis are Strike, Mother, Fragments of an Empire, Bed and Sofa and Man with a Movie Camera. The book is available as a downloadable and word-searchable PDF, and is another welcome example of a university press making some of its back number freely available to all now that their commercial life is over. Nobody loses, and plenty will gain.