Newsletter January 2026
Dear Readers, Authors, and Colleagues,
As we start the new year, we are delighted to reflect on what has been a particularly meaningful moment in the life of Apparatus as 2025 marked the journal’s tenth anniversary. Over the past decade, Apparatus has grown into an established forum for critical, historically grounded, and methodologically innovative scholarship, and this anniversary year offered an opportunity both to take stock of that trajectory and to look ahead.
This year’s activities and publications reflect the intellectual ambitions that have guided the journal since its founding. In 2025, we published two exciting issues that together showcased the journal’s ongoing commitment to expanding the field, challenging established canons, and creating space for new perspectives, voices, and objects of study.
The first issue of the year (Apparatus #20) brought together a diverse range of contributions that engaged deeply with questions of film history, theory, and aesthetics. Across its articles and reviews, the issue foregrounded careful archival work, close textual analysis, and innovative theoretical approaches, while also speaking to larger transnational and comparative debates. As in previous volumes, we were pleased to include not only original research articles but also reviews that extend scholarly discussion beyond the journal and foster dialogue across disciplines and formats. “Women on the Cutting Edge: Editing in Yugoslav Film, and the Authorship of Olga Skrigin” (Dijana Jelača) examines the role of film editing and authorship in Yugoslav cinema. “Eldar Shengelaia’s Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story: Trick Track Trolling the Soviet System” (Nino Dzandzava) revisits Shengelaia’s film to explore its formal and political play within Soviet cinema. “Frame Composition in Ukrainian Film Theory of the 1920s and the Experience of Other Arts” (Larysa Naumova) traces early Ukrainian theoretical engagements with the cinematic frame. “The Cinematic Urbanism of the Kaufman Brothers: Global Context and Personal Visions” (Anna Hurina) situates the Kaufman Brothers’ work within broader urban cinematic practices. “‘Kto ubil Loru Palmer?’: David Lynch and (Post-)Soviet Culture and Cinema” (Raymond De Luca) brings Lynch into conversation with post-Soviet cultural imaginaries.
In the essays section, Sonya Vseliubska’s “Mobilising Attention” considers how Ukrainian documentary filmmakers use technology to shape social and political engagement. Viktoria Paranyuk’s video essay “Meet Part | Mothers Daughters” inaugurates the journal’s video essay format, presenting an innovative form of audiovisual reflection. The issue also featured insightful interviews, including a conversation with Heleen Gerritsen on programming at goEast, and a suite of book reviews that extend critical engagement with recent scholarship.
Our second issue (Apparatus #21, Queer Memories) of the year was developed in dialogue with guest editors Katja Čičigoj and Jasmina Šepetavc and includes a special focus on queer cinema. This publication – with contributions by Kata Benedek, Dagmar Brunow, Anamarija Horvat, Olena Syaivo Dmytryk, Neja Berger, and Tisa Troha – marks an important moment in the journal’s history and offers a valuable intervention in the field. By foregrounding queer perspectives, the special focus contributes to ongoing efforts to rethink cinematic histories, archives, and modes of spectatorship across diverse historical and geographical contexts. We are grateful to Katja Čičigoj and Jasmina Šepetavc for their intellectual guidance and editorial collaboration on the queer cinema focus, as well as to the contributors for their thoughtful and challenging scholarship. Please note that this is a rolling issue: further articles will be added as they are finalised.
Alongside this contribution, the issue brings together a range of articles, translations, and reviews that reflect the journal’s broader scholarly scope. “Wife, Mother (of God), Metaphor of Transcendence: The Functions of Female Characters in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films” (Valentin Peschanskyi) examines gendered figures in Tarkovsky’s work. “Eisenstein on the Play of Objects: Drafts, Commentaries, Translation” (Sergei Eisenstein, Naum Kleiman; trans. Irina Schulzki) offers newly translated archival material. “Three in One: Unfilmed Screenplays by and for Kira Muratova” (Eugénie Zvonkine et al.) engages unpublished screenplay material to rethink Muratova’s practice. The issue also includes a suite of reviews that expand queer and regional cinema scholarship, from environmental film contexts to Ukrainian and Soviet film studies.
Publishing these two issues during our tenth anniversary year felt particularly fitting. Together, they exemplify the journal’s long-standing aim to serve as a space for rigorous scholarship that is attentive to marginalised histories, alternative frameworks, and evolving critical debates. Additionally, Apparatus Press released Larysa Naumova’s Ukrajinská kinematografie. Tvorba jako boj / Cinema in Ukraine as a Battleground, a richly documented resource bringing together valuable historical analysis, key titles, and reference materials on Ukrainian filmmaking, from the VUFKU era of the 1920s through Soviet repression and the legacy of poetic cinema.
As we move beyond this anniversary year, we look forward to sharing new issues and projects with you in the year ahead. In 2026, Apparatus will inaugurate a groundbreaking two-volume special issue devoted entirely to Belarusian cinema. The Spring and Fall issues combine rigorous scholarship with urgent documentation in an effort to preserve endangered cinematic histories while challenging Russo-centric and colonial frameworks within post-Soviet film discourse.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to our contributors, reviewers, readers, and collaborators who have supported Apparatus over the past year and over the past decade. Your engagement continues to shape the journal, ensuring that it remains a vibrant site of scholarly exchange. We thank you for being part of the Apparatus community and wish you a restful and rewarding end of the year.
The Editorial Team
