This is the first collection to be inspired and informed by the new films and archival material that glasnost and perestroika have revealed, and the new methodological approaches that are developing in tandem. The collection brings together cinema historians and film critics from Britain, France, the USA and Russia to re-examine Soviet film and reassess Cold War historiographic assumptions. As well as providing new perspectives and source material on the much mythologised figures of Kuleshov and Medvekin, the book also provides the first extended accounts in English of the careers of directors Yakov Protazanov and Boris Barnett. Inside the Film Factory reveals the subtle interplay between cinema as an industry and as an arm of the state, as mass entertainment and as propaganda. It is essential reading for both historians of Soviet culture and film scholars.