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Best known for Aelita (1924), the classic science-fiction film of the Soviet silent era, Yakov Protazanov directed over a hundred films in a career spanning three decades. Called "the Russian D.W. Griffith" in the 1910s for his formative role in the first movies in the last years of the Russian Empire, he fled the Civil War and maintained a successful career in Europe before making an unusual decision to return to Russia now under Soviet power. There his films continued their remarkable success with audiences undergoing a bewildering and often brutal revolutionary transformation. Rather than treating him as an indistinct, if capable craftsman, The Cinema of Yakov Protazanov argues that his films are suffused with a unique creative vision that reflects both his mindset as a traditional Russian intellectual and his experience of dislocation and migration after 1917. As he adapted his films to revolutionary culture, they intermingled different voices and reinterpreted his past work from a disavowed era. Offering fresh perspectives of Protazanov’s films, the book will give readers a new appreciation of his career. The book offers a uniquely valuable vantage point from which to explore how cinema reflected a society in transformation and a seminal moment in the development of cinematic art.

Silent film is more than just a cinema of firsts, greats, or classics. It is a cinema of experimentation, ambition, and connection. To watch a silent film is to be transported into another world. The Silent Film Companion seeks to broaden the silent film canon by focusing on compelling non-canonical films from around the globe, providing a fresh perspective and new view of silent cinema. With over fifty films discussed, this volume captures just a sliver of the many delights silent cinema has to offer. It encourages discovery, and rediscovery, of the world of silent cinema: one where the movies were still young, full of possibility, and eager to entice others to take part in a wonderful adventure. 

Films covered are from fourteen countries, including Brazil, Mexico, China, Cuba, India, Italy, and Russia, and represent a diversity of subjects. Each chapter provides historical and cultural context to the film, the filmmakers, and a concise analysis of each film. The Silent Film Companion is a must-read for students and fans of silent cinema interested in seeing a side of silent cinema that is rarely explored.