Vlad Dima's Books

The Beautiful Skin

Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa

By: Vlad Dima

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The Beautiful Skin

Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa

By: Vlad Dima

In this original and provocative study of contemporary African film and literature, Vlad Dima investigates the way that football and cinema express individual and collective fantasies, and highlights where football and cinema converge and diverge with regard to neocolonial fantasies. Shedding new light on both well-known and less familiar films by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Moussa Touré, Safi Faye, Cheick Doukouré, and Joseph Gaï Ramaka, among others, the study asks just whose fantasy is articulated in football and African cinema. Answering this question requires the exploration of body and identity issues, here through the metaphor of skin: fantasy as a skin; the football jersey as a skin; and ultimately film itself as a skin that has visual, aural, and haptic qualities. The neocolonial body is often depicted as suffering and in the process of being flattened or emptied. So frequently do African cinema and literature replicate this hollowed body, all skin as it were, that it becomes the very type of body that defines neocolonialism. Could the body of film—the depth of both characters and story within the cinematic skin—hold the key to moving into a post-neocolonial era, an era defined by “full” bodies and personal affirmation? This is the question Dima seeks to answer.

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377

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MSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628954051

ISBN 13

9781628954050

Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

By: Vlad Dima

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Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

By: Vlad Dima

An analysis of the Senegalese film director’s work from the perspective of sound. The art of Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety’s cinema lies in the tension created between the visual narrative and the aural narrative. His work has been considered hugely influential, and his films bridge Western practices of filmmaking and oral traditions from West Africa. Mambety’s film Touki Bouki is considered one of the foundational works of African cinema. Vlad Dima proposes a new reading of Mambety’s entire filmography from the perspective of sound. Following recent analytical patterns in film studies that challenge the primacy of the visual, Dima claims that Mambety uses voices, noise, and silence as narrative tools that generate their own stories and sonic spaces. By turning an ear to cinema, Dima pushes African aesthetics to the foreground of artistic creativity and focuses on the critical importance of sound in world cinema. “Vlad Dima’s close readings of Mambèty’s films sing. His are smart, critically sound interpretations of aesthetically rich and thematically resonant works. This book will surely be of interest to anyone studying movie soundtracks, but it will also interest those who care about the affective dimensions of sound and audition, particularly in the global South.” —Noah Tsika, author of Nollywood Stars “This sophisticated and in-depth analysis aptly demonstrates Vlad Dima’s grasp of the contentious issues surrounding Mambèty’s film legacy as well as the overall perspectives on the degree to which Third Cinema and revolutionary filmmaking fit within an analysis of the Senegalese director’s oeuvre.” —James E. Genova, author of Cinema and Development in West Africa

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246

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253024331

ISBN 13

9780253024336

Meaninglessness

Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema

By: Vlad Dima

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Meaninglessness

Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema

By: Vlad Dima

For too long, the approach to seemingly universal experiences like love, death, and even time in film has been dominated by the Global North. But what if such explorations developed horizontally instead? Drawing from both European and African cultural theorists, including Gilles Deleuze and Wole Soyinka, Vlad Dima invites us to consider what happens to postcolonial African film if we no longer privilege the idea of time. How else might we understand the cinematic image, and how would its meanings change? Meaninglessness: Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema is a study of meaning and meaninglessness through the figure of the undead, beginning with francophone Africa and extending to postcolonial France. Through the analysis of films like Mati Diop’s Atlantics and Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Miraculous Weapons, Dima shows how the African cinematic image may produce meaning without any attachment to European time, and how that meaning is connected instead to the philosophy of negritude and to the notion of rhythm. Meaninglessness introduces the concept of the rhythm-sequence as a new way to understand the African moving image.

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302

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MSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628954760

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9781628954760

Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

By: Vlad Rekovski

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Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

By: Vlad Rekovski

What are emotions and beliefs? How are consciousness and subconsciousness, matter and energy related? Based on real-life examples, Vlad Rekovsky shows how to cross the boundaries prescribed by custom and tradition. How to find yourself and not lose yourself in the crowd? How to develop the abilities inherent in nature and create something that does not depend on it? We get acquainted with the author’s understanding of these complex tasks, which open up the hidden possibilities of a person.

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Litres

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ISBN 10

5043356626

ISBN 13

9785043356628

Contemporary Russian Cinema

Symbols of a New Era

By: Vlad Strukov

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Contemporary Russian Cinema

Symbols of a New Era

By: Vlad Strukov

Analysing films by established directors such as Sokurov and Zel'dovich, as well as lesser-known filmmakers like Balabanov and Kalatozishvili, this book explores the particular style of film presentation that has emerged in Russia since 2000, characterised by its use of highly abstract concepts and visual language.

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304

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

147440765X

ISBN 13

9781474407656

Historical Dictionary of Moldova

By: Andrei Brezianu,Vlad Spânu

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Historical Dictionary of Moldova

By: Andrei Brezianu,Vlad Spânu

The Republic of Moldova claims a European lineage reaching back in time long before its 14th century accession to statehood. In the 15th century, it managed against all odds to avoid being conquered by Islam and_albeit an intermittent vassal after 1485_it maintained its autonomy and was never turned into a province of the Ottoman Empire. After this period, however, Moldova would not be so fortunate, as it altered between Russian, Romanian, and Soviet control until it finally gained its independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Moldova, through its chronology, introduction, appendixes, maps, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events, and institutions and significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects, traces the history of this small, but densely populated country, providing a compass for the direction it is heading.

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Page Count

498

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0810864460

ISBN 13

9780810864467

Autocracy and Health Governance in Russia

By: Vlad Kravtsov

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Autocracy and Health Governance in Russia

By: Vlad Kravtsov

The book is the first attempt to investigate how and to what extent authoritarian (personalistic) regimes fail to provide fundamental goods and services. For two decades, Russian authorities spent much effort and money to improve health administration, but most success stories are borderline fake. The failure is by design; because personalistic regimes rely on personalized exchanges and bargains instead of impersonal rules and permanent organizations, all actors put self-interest ahead of patients’ needs. It is a severe problem because authoritarian principals proclaim social betterment as their central goal -- and many Russians take such claims at face value -- but incentivize their agents to imitate progress and tolerate slipshod performance. The benefits of this investigation are three-fold. First, the book provides an analytical framework of bad governance rooted in the rational institutionalist tradition and connected to competence-control theory. Second, it gives a general readership interested in how Russia works a sense of the key political players’ mindset and the regime-induced constraints under which elites operate. Third, although the book investigates health governance exclusively, its analytical framework is portable to other issue areas and could be applied to explain how and why Russia evolved into an ineffective, coercive, and predatory state under Putin’s leadership.

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Page Count

267

Publisher

Springer Nature

Published Date

ISBN 10

3031057899

ISBN 13

9783031057892

The A to Z of Moldova

By: Andrei Brezianu,Vlad Spânu

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The A to Z of Moldova

By: Andrei Brezianu,Vlad Spânu

The Republic of Moldova claims a European lineage reaching back in time long before its 14th century accession to statehood. In the 15th century, it managed against all odds to avoid being conquered by Islam and-albeit an intermittent vassal after 1485-it maintained its autonomy and was never turned into a province of the Ottoman Empire. After this period, however, Moldova would not be so fortunate, as it altered between Russian, Romanian, and Soviet control until it finally gained its independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union. The A to Z of Moldova, through its chronology, introduction, appendixes, maps, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, places, events, and institutions and significant political, economic, social, and cultural aspects, traces the history of this small, but densely populated country, providing a compass for the direction it is heading.

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Page Count

500

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1461672031

ISBN 13

9781461672036

Black Girl (La Noire De...)

By: Vlad Dima

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Black Girl (La Noire De...)

By: Vlad Dima

Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest, most groundbreaking filmmakers in the history of cinema, an acclaimed novelist, and the most renowned African director of the twentieth century. Black Girl was his brilliant, blistering debut. Released in 1966, it won the Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival that year. The film is about a young Senegalese woman, played powerfully by M'Bissine Thérèse Diop, who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family as a nanny, but quickly discovers that life in their apartment is a prison, both figuratively and literally; but it is also a searing, nuanced critique of the lingering colonialism in the supposedly postcolonial world. Vlad Dima's study of Black Girl argues that the film helped to map the future of African cinema. He situates it within its postcolonial context, considering its adaptation from the eponymous short story first published in 1962. He examines the performances of Mbissine Thérèse Diop (Diouana), Anne-Marie Jelinek (Madame) and Robert Fontaine (Monsieur), considering the ways in which they embody or subvert postcolonial, French archetypes, and then goes on to examine the technical aspects of Sembene's filmmaking, such as his innovative use of framing and aural composition. Finally, he traces the film's lasting influence on African cinema, from Sembène's own Xala (1975), to Safi Faye's Mossane (1996), Joseph Gaï Ramaka's Karmen Geï (2001), Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Saignantes (2005), and Mati Diop's Atlantics (2019).

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British Film Institute

Published Date

ISBN 10

1839027355

ISBN 13

9781839027352

The Beautiful Skin

Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa

By: Vlad Dima

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The Beautiful Skin

Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa

By: Vlad Dima

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

377

Publisher

MSU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628954051

ISBN 13

9781628954050

Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

By: Vlad Dima

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Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

By: Vlad Dima

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Page Count

246

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253024331

ISBN 13

9780253024336

Meaninglessness

Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema

By: Vlad Dima

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Meaninglessness

Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema

By: Vlad Dima

Through the analysis of films like Mati Diop's Atlantics and Ladj Ly's Les Misérables, Meaninglessness is a study of meaning and meaninglessness through the figure of the undead, beginning with francophone sub-Saharan Africa and extending to postcolonial France"--

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Page Count

220

Publisher

African Humanities and the Art

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611864380

ISBN 13

9781611864380

Book's by Vlad Dima

The Beautiful Skin

The Beautiful Skin

Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

Meaninglessness

Meaninglessness

Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

Manage your dream. Your opportunities are endless

Contemporary Russian Cinema

Contemporary Russian Cinema

Historical Dictionary of Moldova

Historical Dictionary of Moldova

Autocracy and Health Governance in Russia

Autocracy and Health Governance in Russia

The A to Z of Moldova

The A to Z of Moldova

Black Girl (La Noire De...)

Black Girl (La Noire De...)

The Beautiful Skin

The Beautiful Skin

Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films

Meaninglessness

Meaninglessness

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