Blockchain Papers

Marilyne Ordekian, Antonis Papasavva, Enrico Mariconti, Marie Vasek

Cryptocurrency scams have risen in popularity with the mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies. People can fall victim to them because of their lack of knowledge, particularly when they gain a sense of trust in the ecosystem via a scammer. In this paper, we analyze 143 cryptocurrency scams across 11 different types mined from 133 scam narratives collated by the government of California. Most of these are pig-butchering scams (101) where attackers interact with their victims, gain their trust, and introduce them to a (scam) cryptocurrency investment opportunity. These scams vary in lure which indicates the wide variety of scams in our sample. Scammers often portray themselves as the gender opposite of their target; our results show greater financial gains using this approach. Furthermore, most scams end up communicating via messaging apps, regardless of how the scammer initially reached out to the victim. These cross-platform movements indicate a leap of faith and trust in the scammer needed to scam the victim. While many of these scams involved a fake cryptocurrency trading platform (124), we find some (33) using well-known and legitimate cryptocurrency exchanges to lend credibility to their schemes and avoid raising suspicion. To this end, we make recommendations for legitimate cryptocurrency platforms, regulators, and the community to deter and counter the prevalence of such scams.

Björn Krondorfer

Reviewed by: The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective by Carroll P. Kakel III Björn Krondorfer The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretive Perspective. By Carroll P. Kakel III. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xi + 299. Cloth $85.00. ISBN: 978-0230275157. Carroll Kakel’s monograph compares patterns of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide in Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and early America (1783–1890). This is a courageous undertaking, especially given the heated debates about the value of comparative analysis in genocide and Holocaust studies, as well as about the destruction of Native American life in the context of American history. Kakel proposes a “new ‘optics’” (7) that links the disparate histories of America’s westward expansion (“Manifest Destiny”) and Nazi Germany’s eastward expansion in search of Lebensraum. He argues that the study of comparative genocide and transnational colonialism helps us better grasp the “patterns, logics, and pathologies” (3) of national projects that combined territorial expansion with racial thinking, resulting in violent practices of exclusion, elimination, and forced assimilation. A comparison of expansionist ideologies of empire and settler colonialism, spatial conquest and racial cleansing, as well as frontier mentalities and genocidal practices align the histories of Early America and Nazi Germany in ways, Kakel contends, that suggest disquieting analogies. The book’s tripartite structure (“Continental Imperialism,” “Settler Colonialism,” “Frontier Genocide”) organizes the comparison along a continuum that begins with the formation of expansionist ideology and ends with practices of eliminationist violence. Nazi leaders regarded the East as Lebensraum to be conquered, settled, and colonized. For example, Karl Haushofer, a geopolitical theorist, influenced Adolf Hitler’s thinking in this regard, and Hitler’s self-description of as a Raumpolitiker (rather than as a Grenzpolitiker) echoes imperial ideologies that Kakel also sees at work in the more “aggressive” (30) Jacksonian version of America’s westward expansion. In fact, Nazi planners of Lebensraum policies referred to the “Wild East” as the America of the “Germanic peoples” (45). Intriguingly, Kakel pulls together a number of quotes by Nazi leaders in which they directly refer to America’s expansion to justify their own thirst for territory. But whether such occasional referencing constituted an “obsession for Hitler” (3), as Kakel claims, is not really backed up by empirical proof (e.g., a statistical analysis). Nazi ideology was certainly obsessed with the “Jewish question,” but was it really obsessed with the American West? Though the book does not provide a satisfying answer, a comparative analysis does reveal that planners of colonial practices looked at and learned from historical antecedents—including the treatment of indigenous populations considered expendable. Notions of space and race thus “became interlocking imperatives” (45). Each of the six chapters briefly introduces what is conceptually at stake (e.g., racial “othering,” colonization, genocide), presents historical antecedents of both early [End Page 228] American and German histories, and then discusses more specific developments. The two national histories are rigidly separated (first early America, then Nazi Germany) throughout the monograph; they are only brought together when briefly discussing similarities and differences at the conclusion of each chapter. This methodical approach not only makes for monotonous reading, but also results in unnecessary repetitions: specific information is reiterated (at times verbatim) and the main thesis repackaged in numerous variations. The book, which grew out of a doctoral thesis, would have greatly benefited from further shortening. Kakel’s thesis works best when investigating comparative patterns with regard to imperial notions of territorial conquest and settler colonialism, but is less persuasive with respect to genocide. When comparing the Nazi genocide of the Jews with the American destruction of its indigenous population, his language obscures rather than clarifies. At stake is the question of how systematic, intentional, and deliberate the early American campaign to dispossess and then eliminate Native Americans had been. On the one hand, Kakel claims intentionality; on the other hand, he is aware that genocidal practices in the American West differed considerably from the mass killings by the Nazis in the East. He calls what happened in America “government-sponsored genocidal wars of conquest,” which involved “deliberate genocidal intent to annihilate Indian[s]”—but then refers to the...

Marco Cucco

Abstract Italian cinema has often been a battle-ground between national government and local administrations. Since 1975 many laws have been passed in order to find a compromise between centralized control of filmic activities and a collective management that involving the State and local institutions. Despite the controversy, in the past two decades local administrations have become aware of the economic benefits from supporting film productions. Therefore they have been implementing film-friendly measures (film commissions, film funds, film incentives and tax revenues). At the same time the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali/Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities is reconsidering its mission by moving from financing films to becoming a promoter, financier and regulator of the Italian cinema industry as a whole. This article analyses how in the past 35 years the Italian state and regions have negotiated their powers regarding cinematographic activities. It also examines the development of film commissions and film funds introduced by local administrations for supporting film production. The final part of the article suggests that financing and regulation of film production in Italy is experiencing a decentralization process.

Sabina Loriga

Historiographical debates do not always stay put in the academic world. It may well be that they escape from the academy more often these days. Since the 1980s, this has been happening repeatedly and in different ways in connection with a number of more or less public cases that captured the attention of a larger public on such topics as the memory of slavery, Nazi gold, the war in Algeria, or anticommunist purges. The controversy set in motion by Ariel Toaff's recent book, Pasque di sangue,1 published in 2007, is such a case. The book became the source of lengthy and tense debates as soon as it came out, in Italy at first, and soon internationally. In the first two months alone, more than 150 articles appeared in the most important Italian, Israeli, American, and even French newspapers. In view of this extraordinary public debate, Toaff's work and the public reaction to it should be of interest to historians everywhere. What is at the heart of the questions raised by the continuing debate is historical method itself as well as the context within which historians do their work and the uses of the past. With this book, the medievalist Ariel Toaff stepped out of the confines of academic history to bring public attention to bear on the old accusation of ritual murder leveled against Jews. He did this by revisiting a famous trial conducted five centuries ago. His motive is to remove Jewish history from its exploitation by modern Jewish fringe groups. In the wake of Toaff's surprising book, others have spoken out: among them many historians, and also newspapers, publishers, spokesmen for various religious faiths (Jewish, Catholic, Muslim), political groups as well, various pressure groups, broad sectors of public opinion (by means of petitions and blogs)—in sum, this book quickly set in motion all the elements of a strident political and cultural battle—think of the Dreyfus “Affaire”—although in Toaff's case we have a historian intervening publicly, not to proclaim the innocence of a condemned person, but to argue that he was in fact guilty.2 I would like to show that this debate has been carried on along a series of unconnected and discordant settings. We ought to clarify the configurations and the conflicting logical positions at work in these debates so that we can try to understand what is at stake here. Before I tackle the issues at the heart of the debates, it may be useful to go back briefly to the history of the ritual murder accusations. This accusation, the Blood Libel, as it is known, refers to atrocious crimes, infanticides, and to religious hatred, but more than that is involved: the that such have a ritual The accusation of ritual murder is from the that have as of and in the of this accusation has to in which the have to or from these they have and in the memory of Jewish The accusation of ritual murder has in the but it has and in at various of with the for against Jewish even it to be in the of of The first with the of the of ritual murder in and The by the of and to in and In the of a was The by the a is with the of murder of the accusation of The is a that is to he is He as a which is the of The fact that the at a of the the of a with the of di a in in This was to for This a at the Jewish was in was not a of of or a of This modern of the ritual murder accusation a by two ritual murder as of was with a that of Jewish this the of modern In the the accusation, the against on two The trial of this in in The was was in The fact that the accusation of ritual murder to the and not in Nazi In from the and in the of in the of the old that to among groups and in the it is by the and by and In sum, what we have is a that a from to on the of the in the of the was the trial in in was to and the it was the of of against and by the of the that a months the of a His was in a the of a of the Jewish in was against a the the Jewish of of the for ritual The the at first, of the and by the to the of Jewish to by on the of the to the of two others in the a in a months more carried was among political and religious The for the and the of on a by the the as but and the of and the the trial and the a of in the of the to to the of which to the for this would be as a the of more than The trial at is important for two In the trial was the of the is to in a The as the to for accusation or This was a in which was The to of the not for to religious is was the fact that in the first of a series of a with this the to would the of religious of the ritual murder a of the a with the of to the of to the The and the of in and of The of the was to in cultural in the of and public a that would in the of as in a in of The of the of its the the to from its against the Jews. on the the in the the the accusation of against the and condemned all of the of put to of public for from the of and to Since have been to the In the came to the of by the Jewish by that among and the of back was their a of the for of the in the the of the to public In the that been to became a of In a was put in of the that to The this a in a and the of the of to with this for as a to in the of and In the of the historians have for that the of ritual murder of as they on have also to the of these in it to the innocence of the in but from that on historians have to the which they a their on the of the in the 2007, the medievalist Ariel on the of in is also of the most of Jewish history published Pasque di The on that well the case of Toaff that the among was so that the at the in in of the and against the of Toaff's is not that Jewish in the of the he that in the of was in the of and that this was a ritual to in was to the for the or the but not to the The among the of the Toaff's which is on the on two The first the of the In Toaff's the by the can be they of ritual that the not be Toaff's on the of the The fact that a number of is to of their the of ritual the of Toaff's book is its with Jewish in always to and to Toaff as to go with the and and In sum, they to have been of the of The of for in to have been most of their their from with and all this in a in the In Toaff on the to a of he the in Italy as a and and often of its or its the and often by the it is not surprising that they for to their in the he in religious and in a that was and This was a which to the of and of and to understand the of these Toaff's at a to of and Jewish In Toaff that he been the ritual murder with work in been to understand the as by the with the of the to In such as I and he that the was not a in the bring to of that been and of to the context in which the to such a method and the of the at the the and the of the he put in connection with the of Toaff's book, that in the of the and the to and the by the the by the that from the we can that what we at that to of the to the to a Toaff to but he to it with He on in of the and he on the he the and the that which the that is to the of ritual the and the of the was on this Toaff's work is in with a number of in recent in the of Jewish is a at a and of the Jewish as it in with the of has on and has also been at the for in Jewish that historians in a Jewish with a in which is for with in the and in the with such as in the of and their even in the of in the to the of by for a ritual that with He in the of the in the wake of the to their than have them to This would have been the source of the of ritual the have to their is their of would they not be of the of their the of Jewish that is in famous of in the of the to the of the and to the the of in the of of in in that Toaff and to attention to of the history of as they have been or in Jewish It is important to that the in cases and was the to to bring to the of to be Jewish In this they to the of Jewish history as a by the in this The in sum, was to Jewish to of the more of the the of The was to the as of to them as in their with their and their Ariel Toaff to that in Jewish as he is Jewish history to the history of the fact that of ritual murder have to In book, Pasque di Toaff to the of the ritual he not to of or of in Jewish he for a larger His is a he is not a the he is also the of as the of as at the of The of carried by for Toaff's book, at the The Pasque di to the of for the also is not but often The of and a such a broad the a that of of The a in He has a and a in as he is to the of a on a of can be in a The refers to the in in as the of it is as the of The the that book of the most of the history of the of this trial and of many others the the ritual and of in Jewish and the that as as is the ritual murder accusation was not always the the published in which that Ariel Toaff that the and a was the the and the Toaff's book as Toaff is for extraordinary in the of and for Toaff's of the of the it is that the should have a that it the not of the of the but of the of of have to the of the case. The of the is a as as it is the of the of on the of and the of their in the of we of of and or we that is to by the this has been The more came from the medievalist Toaff's and with from to Ariel Toaff he the not historical on and on to of the but he also the of of that have he not of that would be He with and to that is for that this was a such is to a the that the carried out by the at the may be history of the of in has been of and in at the is it so so in to that in the of the of and may have been more and less than the have and carried out atrocious of I have to that the is not and a of I that the raised by Ariel Toaff has more than been at briefly by a number of and of the and is the of the and of the a would to and such as the Ariel Toaff in and I would like to what Jewish for we can at the of the The book to be a out in two the book in the newspapers. the case at the of a and Toaff is the of the this can is to in the and with the and so as to that may have been This was not to be out of their to a the we the in the of a not with cultural the most for put so a should be with such is a book of this a been and of is can we In ways can the for this in the many it The reaction of most historians was the The first the of which on by do not historians to the of the the fact that of of ritual murder not in and of that such This may in fact that the the them to Toaff has the by the of a of in at the all the against the of ritual all the and all the and that the and the centuries in of the Toaff on the of Jewish and on such as of and in of to a is it to the of ritual murder in the cultural context the of of Jewish in to historians, Toaff did not but in to and and and with Toaff's has to do with the of the Toaff the with the he is in the of the He from within the it to the of ritual murder or that of the of the of have been as and This has not of in and in the from that they and that they of the In the of of the it on at the itself from the of This is the of to a book that the of the that and their is the of Toaff's He from source to in a back to the trial and on to the in to of and to the with the to with the and of a a of by in the at Toaff's is of may with the as the out of to to public to in the of Toaff's is in from a to the of of Toaff the and book is a It is with a of and of view that not The in which this book is the to of a The the of Toaff's book The of the Jewish has a the of for ritual the such a It is to on centuries as the of historical as as they The was that of as a of and This which to the of has was by a from Ariel Toaff's not at all in with I as well as a public to the by that the Jewish even they go as as of the their reaction in the Toaff is on the of various in the the of the of to to of such may not be historians, but they it to questions of ritual and in such quickly they have and so have well that in this case the of and the ways of have not been the public by means of is not In such academic not the religious of has been on a that has always been would that among as among can be to go from to that has and its to such crimes, is a to of the most in the this in is not the of is the that can escape from at to in the world. This to even to their as their larger of the Ariel Toaff did not this of book, at first, he of in a In of he to on the such as the accusation of ritual murder leveled against have been out of He out, and this is book, I I was of I the to that the the Jewish or the of the of that to a he book as a for is what I I in at a to that the we to and to all of religious Jewish or In the of a Jewish that is not that and is more than the the accusation of In we to and we have to remove from the of Jewish of by its of the of political he the of the did not even in the book be condemned to be in the not from I that the have their the Ariel Toaff the of the the and for the so as to to the not to the even the He that book has been and he on the of from of as he is he was with cases that be as His was on a of in a in such which to sum, the of what the the the of book, he and with a the that Jewish have ritual He ritual have was academic to the of the that the within in the by Toaff to the that from 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the in recent at the of the of the of the to the of a of that would the of that in with and on Ariel Toaff that book was to be from the of and of book, I have to the so that I may the that have been at the on the of the of and has been from a work of to and the Jewish and to as for against Toaff that he and that he to to the as to for the of work which to the Jewish I that should of or of as for the that to the murder of of Ariel Toaff's was by that he did the with this also I would have like this from has always been a and this and book It is not by such that on to the of for the which its that the not in and that it of which the has been the This has for the of academic and for which has been at the source of the the of Pasque di political in these to but they to on the political of The first reaction is not the of the historical to the of a number of by to the was at the source of and he is a is it that the a With the of of the and the the the to the of and to that to may to be a 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Monica Dall’Asta, Alessandra Chiarini

Women's interest in found footage and compilation has been extraordinarily intense from the very beginning.1 Even the origins of this peculiar mode of film production are tied to a woman's name, that of Esfir Shub, the great director of Soviet cinema who was the first to create an essayistic feature by putting together pieces of archival footage.2 Her seminal film of 1927, Padenie Dinastii Romanovykh (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty), depicts the collapse of the Tsarist empire from the February Revolution to the October Revolution of 1917 purely by means of a montage of preexisting footage. Followed by a handful of other films she made with the same method in subsequent years, this first experimentation in compilation film was an opportunity for Shub to demonstrate the creative power of montage, showing how even the most resistant, unyielding materials can generate an entirely new meaning from the way they are combined—as for example in the case of the numerous shots taken by the camerapeople of the Tsarist film industry, which were transformed through her editing into incontrovertible proof of the necessity of the Revolution. In a way, then, Shub's work can be considered the most advanced result of all the philosophy of the Soviet avant-garde, for her films test Lev Kuleshov's intuition about the signifying power of montage by reworking preconstituted materials that had been originally produced to respond to a completely different, and sometimes even opposite, ideological project.3Many more women after Shub have adopted compilation as their privileged approach to film production and experimentation. Once a marginal form even in the documentary field, found footage cinema is now enjoying an extremely vital phase, fostered by both the exponential growth of the audiovisual archive and the improvement of digital editing technologies that have made film images all the more usable. Up to the 1950s and through the appearance of new avant-garde movements at the end of that decade, the history of found footage cinema consists of very few names and a similarly small number of film titles. And yet, even in the first half of the twentieth century women are a notable presence in the field, not only for their sheer numbers, but also by virtue of the quality and originality of their work. In this context we need to cite at least the name of Germaine Dulac, whose archival film of 1935 anticipates many typical concerns of the contemporary debate about the historicity of the film image. Le cinéma au service de l'histoire (Cinema at the Service of History) was assembled by Dulac during a period of intensive archival research at Gaumont, where she had been employed until the previous year as coeditor of the company's newsreel, France Actualités. Her monumental film is constructed from fragments taken from Gaumont newsreels from 1905 to 1935, and presents itself as a recollection, as well as a critical assessment, of the historical experiences made by a generation, her own, that was equal in age with the cinema: the generation born during the Belle Epoque, educated in the myth of progress, and doomed to witness its ruinous dissolution in the disaster of World War I, only to find itself confronted with the advent of dictatorships and totalitarianism. Made in the political-cultural context of the Popular Front (the film was made to be screened on the occasion of the opening of an independent “all-newsreel” film venue), Cinema at the Service of History reveals a thorough confidence in the testimonial power of cinema.4 It is at once a requiem about the atrocities of war and its moral, social, political, and economic consequences, and a warning to the present about repeating the mistakes of the past.Alongside Shub and Dulac, the third female master of found footage cinema before the 1960s is no doubt Nicole Vedrès. Her innovative work on Paris 1900 (1947) combined a “classical” approach to compilation film, based on exclusive use of documentary sources, and a more definitely modern approach, which regards the products of narrative cinema as no less legitimate sources of historical knowledge than documentary materials. Vedrès's work anticipates by several decades the awareness, typical of the debate on film and history of the early 1980s, that every film, whether narrative or documentary, bears a number of specifically historical traits—or, rather, what Vedrès characterizes as a specific form of historical truth that expresses itself in a visual quality on the order of photogénie.5This early phase of the history of found footage cinema, where three women play a primary role, draws to a close at the end of the 1950s. A more critical, irreverent, and playful attitude toward archival images, and a tendency to employ the past to produce an allegory of the present, and often quite a complex one, appears in the work of diverse experimental filmmakers, including Isidore Isou, Stan VanDerBeek, Bruce Conner, and Guy Debord. Again, several women participate as well in this new moment that marks the evolution of found footage film as a major form of experimental cinema, often referred to as collage film. Though the women's names are more obscure today than the filmmakers we have just cited, their position in this shift is far from secondary in terms of their critical awareness and their innovations.Already in 1959, Jane Conger Belson Shimané's Odds and Ends offered a precocious example of a collage film that mixes outtakes of travelogues with abstract animation, both painted on the filmstrip and created with paper cutouts. Since then, the ranks of women involved in the deconstruction of the codes of contemporary culture—and often particularly of its sexist stereotypes—through the reworking of preexisting footage has not stopped growing. Filmmakers such as Anita Thacher, Chick Strand, Dara Birnbaum, Peggy Ahwesh, Michelle Citron, Abigail Child, Hito Steyerl, Angela Ricci Lucchi, Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Eve Heller, Vivian Ostrovsky, Nina Fonoroff, Sabine Hiebler, and Frédérique Devaux, or, among the younger ones, Lana Lin, Naomi Uman, Deborah Stratman, Caroline Avery, Cheryl Dunye, Cathy Joritz, Barbara Meter, Louise Bourque, Magda Matwiejew, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Rebecca Baron, Meike Fehre, Meryll Hardt, and Lisa Reboulleau—and those whose work is analyzed in this issue of Feminist Media Histories: Myriam Borsoutsky, Cecilia Mangini, Cécile Fontaine, Barbara Hammer, Valentina Monti, and Alina Marazzi—make us tempted to describe found footage cinema as a field where gender parity is close to being finally attained.Yet we want to resist explaining away such a proliferation of female auteurs who choose a most difficult manner of expressing their own imagination and thought—through images created by others in different places and times—with some sort of specific or “essential” female inclination toward montage, maybe even by invoking its similarity to the tailoring operations of cutting and sewing. Such essentialist comparisons can certainly be suggestive, but they hardly help us understand the reality of women's experience in the sphere of filmmaking. Even less could we endorse a thesis that would interpret women's bent for compilation films as an ability to excel exclusively in contexts characterized by a minimum creative coefficient. On the contrary, the innovative content of cases such as those we briefly recall above should demonstrate the opposite—that is, women's extraordinary creative capacity, evidenced by their ability to extract the maximum coefficient of originality from seemingly inert materials.But this would be a simplification, too, a sterile generalization based on a purely reactive attitude. A more interesting approach begins when one considers the apparent affinity between women and the practice of found footage, on the one hand, and on the other the material conditions of film production—more precisely, the difference that exists between the labor involved in editing and researching and that involved in shooting, especially in commercial cinema. All available data show that commercial cinema, which, as everyone knows, is basically a narrative and fictional type of cinema, is a field where only a few women succeed in reaching and holding directorial roles. We are then prompted to ask whether the specific difference that is responsible for found footage cinema being such a favorable field for women's initiative should not be sought at the level of what we mean by “film directing” in the first place.Cameraless cinema does not imply “directing” in the common sense of the word. Women working in found footage do not direct actors and technicians on a film set; they do not preside over complex organizational machines from the apex of the film set's hierarchical system. If they work in a group, they do so by choosing a few close collaborators, often other women. Their work more closely resembles conducting a research project, including immersive sessions in archives and philological interrogations about the materials, than directing a film set. This amounts to saying that women, in the absence of directorial opportunities within the frame of institutional cinema, may have elected the practice of found footage as a way to build an autonomous space of creativity that allows them to transform limitations into a stylistic peculiarity.6The subtitle of this issue, “Women Without a Movie Camera,” alludes in a clearly provocative way to the objective condition of limitation that women experience in their attempts to access professional opportunities for directing in the mainstream film industry, a situation that, in our interpretive hypothesis, can explain better than any tailoring metaphor the remarkable intensity of female creativity in found footage cinema.7 More than a yen for reusing archives, the breadth of female presence in the history of films derived from found footage proves women's tenacious will to make cinema at all costs, even if it means inventing their own modes of independent production under conditions of limitation and lack of means. Clear evidence of this is that even when they leave the particular sphere of found footage and take up the camera, these filmmakers usually keep working beyond the borders of mainstream narrative cinema, that is, in the fields of documentary, experimental, or animated cinema.Put another way, if an affinity between women and found footage cinema exists, most likely it is not because the process resembles “cutting and sewing,” but because cameraless cinema appears as a utopian mode of production that can be practiced in perfect autonomy, or together with a small group of trusted collaborators, in which a lack of means can be countervailed with patience and flair. It is a cinema that, as in the case of Cécile Fontaine, can even be executed at home at the kitchen sink.The remarkable number of women filmmakers who are or were active in found footage cinema could then be taken as confirmation of the famous hypothesis advanced by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own (1929), that we would now have many more female names in the history books if women had had their own rooms where they could work in peace, away from the stereotypes and performative codes of patriarchal culture. The separateness and seclusion of the editing room are more than just metaphors for Woolf's idea of the room of one's own as a space of autonomy and expressive freedom.The field at stake is obviously much larger than is possible to analyze within the limits of the present publication. Unable to cover the entire, rich spectrum of women's contributions to the history of found footage cinema, we chose a series of studies on a few individual figures who represent various different approaches.8The issue opens with a selection of articles by Esfir Shub, as yet unpublished in English, introduced and edited by Liubov Dyshlyuk. The publication of these materials drawn from Shub's autobiographical book Zhizn' moya – kinematograf (Cinema Is My Life, 1972) is a deserved homage to a figure who is regularly presented as the most influential pioneer of compilation film, but whose poetic reflections are almost completely unknown in the Western world. Dating back to the time of the making of The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), Shub's writings in this issue document her extraordinary awareness in tackling the task of assembling in a coherent montage a host of such heterogeneous materials as old newsreels, home movies, and institutional documentaries. In their rigorous as well as impassioned tone, which continuously emphasizes the political valences of filmmaking, these articles confirm the fundamental position that Shub occupies not only in the practice of, but also in reflections about, the practice of compilation cinema.Monica Dall'Asta's essay on Myriam Borsoutsky and Nicole Vedrès focuses on two French figures who are almost completely forgotten today. In the virtually perfect obscurity of Borsoutsky (better known as Myriam)—who was Sacha Guitry's editor during the 1930s, before collaborating with Vedrès on Paris 1900 and codirecting La Course de taureaux (Bullfight, 1951) alongside Pierre Braunberger—Dall'Asta finds a clue to retracing a possible female genealogy of French found footage cinema. The rediscovery, or rather the discovery, of Myriam, whose skills in editing were so outstanding as to be called “diabolical” by André Bazin, discloses a whole cultural scene that includes as many different figures as Braunberger, Henri Langlois, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Jacques Brunius, Denise Tual, Victoria Mercanton, and Yannick Bellon. Paradoxically, Myriam's obscurity becomes the crucial element that illuminates a gray area in film history, beginning with Vedrès's groundbreaking work.Better known for the documentaries she shot—which register, with the precision of an anthropologist's eye, the transformations of Italian society between the 1960s and the 1970s—Cecilia Mangini also belongs to the crowd of forgotten women filmmakers. Her films based on the technique of assemblage are examined in deep detail in Dalila Missero's essay. Mangini's work in the archives began with the making of All'armi siam fascisti! (To Arms! We're Fascists!, 1961–62), the film she made with her husband, Lino Del Fra, and the socialist film critic Lino Micciché, and continued with Stalin (1962–63), codirected with Lino Del Fra and the great Marxist poet Franco Fortini. As with Dulac's and Vedrès's earlier works, To Arms! We're Fascists! offers a critical reading of the historical experience of the authors' generation, born under the Fascist regime and subjected to the destructive fascinations of its ideology. To find the documentary materials for both this film and Stalin (issued in 1963 in a version reedited by the producer and disavowed by the authors), Mangini conducted research in several archives around the world, facing huge difficulties. Her interest in the meaning effects attainable through the recombination of stock footage is further documented by an intense sequence in her film of women's emancipation, Essere donne (Being Women, 1963–65), of which Missero proposes an extremely accurate analysis.Barbara Hammer's first feature, Nitrate Kisses (1992), is examined by Alessandra Chiarini as an example of a film based on the construction of a complex relationship between stock footage and original shots. In conceiving of her cinema as a means for the expression of “feeling-images,” that is, “inseparable unity of emotion and thought/idea/image and internal bodily states of excitement,” Hammer is in search of an alternative style to the linear narration of mainstream cinema.9 In the movement of thoughts and emotions that spring from the flow of images in the film, Chiarini sees a method of assemblage that is reminiscent of Maya Deren's theorizations about “vertical cinema.” In Nitrate Kisses this method is adopted to a history of the twentieth century by and footage and original shots are combined in to a critical about history that into the and of between past and present, individual and very different case is presented in essay on Cécile A French who is very of what Nicole has called a approach to found footage, the of preexisting images by way of on the film a of that in and of or of the film her on the relationship between the stylistic and and that the mode of La to the construction of The are where a with the of the film is with an to the content of the the most original of the the of footage to the that her to her from when she was a In these materials a complex whose and quite result is the of the of of film archives to create new films is the of essay. 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