New Books Network Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Nov 19, 2025
Dustin Condren, an associate professor of Russian studies and film/media scholar, dives into the world of Sergei Eisenstein's unrealized film projects. He discusses the creative and theoretical significance of unfinished works, highlighting Eisenstein's ambitious concepts like Glass House and MMM, a time-travel comedy. Condren shares insights into Eisenstein's experiences in Hollywood, exploring how American influences shaped his subsequent projects. He also teases his upcoming research on animal representation in Stalinist cinema, bridging history and creativity.
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Research Rooted In Personal Creative Failures
- Dustin Condren recounts his personal path from creative theater and photography to researching Eisenstein's unfinished films.
- He connects his own experience of abandoned projects to valuing unrealized artistic labor as meaningful work.
Unfinished Films Live In Paper Trails
- Cinema leaves a large paper trail, letting scholars reconstruct unrealized films from notes, treatments, and screen tests.
- Different projects produce distinct archival materials depending on how close they reached production.
Unfinished Work As Theoretical Laboratory
- The unfinished connects to art-historical debates about the fragment and the infinite, from Michelangelo to Romantics.
- For Eisenstein, unfinished projects were theoretical laboratories integral to his artistic development.
