The latest in Wallflower's excellent 24 Frames series, each of which examines a national (or regional) cinema by commenting on two-dozen selected movies. Typically, the Russian volume - edited by Birgit Bemuers, introduced by Sergei Bordov (Prisoner of the Mountains) and covering 1916 to the present - avoids, where possible, the too obvious, or too voluminously written-about: thus we have Richard Taylor on Eisenstein's Strike rather than Battleship Potemkin; Natasha Synessios on Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood rather than Andrei Rublev. Typically, too, the thematic content is rich, if - in the context of ten-page articles - succinct and introductory.Of the stuff I know, Ian Christie writes exemplary summations of Lev Kuleshov's influential 1924 agitprop adventure Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks and Aleksandr Sokurov's Russian Ark, as does Anthony Anemone of Aleksei German's long-banned My Friend Ivan Lapshin, but there are equally interesting and informative pieces on (even) more obscure movies, from the musical Carnival Night to animations like Norstein's Tale of Tales. It's obvious that the writers are drawn from the academic pool, but in the main, they show an enviable ability to address and appeal to a wider, if still serious, audience.

Birgit Beumers is Senior Lecturer in the Russian Department at Bristol University. Her publications include Burnt by the Sun (2000) and PopCulture: Russia! (2005).