Birgit Beumers is Professor of Film Studies at Aberystwyth University (UK). She specialises in Russian culture, especially cinema and theatre. Her most recent publications include A History of Russian Cinema (2009) and Performing Violence (with Mark Lipovetsky, 2009); she has edited Directory of World Cinema: Russia (2010; 2014), The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (with N. Condee, 2011), Russia’s New Fin de Siècle (2013), and Cinema in Central Asia: Rewriting Cultural Histories (with M. Rouland and G. Abikeyeva, 2013). She is editor of KinoKultura and of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.