The Chaplin Machine

'Traces an enjoyably idiosyncratic path back and forth between film studios and factories on opposing continents ... offers intellectual excitement as well as rigour'

-- Pamela Hutchinson, Guardian

'Teems with exciting histories, possibilities, outrages and revelations. This brilliantly researched and beautifully written lightning bolt of a book approaches art and its history from a completely new point of the compass, and its readers will never again see the last century as they once did! An eye-bulging astonishment!'

-- Guy Maddin, director of films including The Saddest Music in the World and My Winnipeg.

'Puts the Lenin back in Chaplin and the Chaplin back in the pre-Stalinist USSR. Brilliantly conceived, impeccably researched and concisely written. A definitive work'

-- Jon Beller, author of The Cinematic Mode of Production (Dartmouth College Press, 2006)

'A dark comedy'

-- Benjamin Noys, Review 31

'Captivating reading; lively, informative and entertaining'

-- Times Literary Supplement

'A precious and thoroughly researched book, shedding light on a very stimulating chapter of (film) history'

-- Brooklyn Rail

'A masterly presentation depicting the parody which existed under a communist regime; and showed how Soviet film, art and arhitecture could not avoid the influence of capitalist Americanism ... It is a pioneering work in the field of early film studies and politics'

-- International Journal of Russian Studies

'Engaging and provocative'

-- Open Democ