Starlight and Stargazers: Slavic Screen Celebrities by HelenaGoscilo, ed. Film and Media Studies. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2024. 374 pp. 129. 00. ISBN 979‐8‐8871‐9499‐8

Helena Goscilo's latest volume of essays is devoted to screen stars of Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, and Russian origin. As is true of her earlier edited volumes, whose topics have helped to hone Slavic Studies' cutting edge, Starlight and Stargazers presents an abundance of information about actors and directors whom most readers know only by name, if at all. The book's introduction and eleven chapters amply demonstrate that, in addition to contributing to the firmament of film greats, Slavic cultures have also generated forms of screen celebrity that challenge Hollywood's model. Goscilo's introduction offers a highly engaging overview of the volume's topic, whose theoretical scaffolding she limits to modern celebrity, as established by Lord Byron, citing major scholars to whom essays in the volume systematically refer. She then provides her own survey of the cinema stars who emerged over the past century in the four regions treated in Starlight and Stargazers. In addition to carefully considering how we might disentangle Ukrainian stardom from that of its imperial overlord, be it Russia or the Soviet Union, Goscilo constructs a brief yet comprehensive foundation for understanding film stardom in Eastern Europe, on which the volume's essays build. This book's geographic coverage leans slightly toward Poland, with four chapters devoted to this country's best-known director and actors. Chapter 1, by Beth Holmgren, explores the remarkable life and prolific works of actor Eugeniusz Bodo, tracing his career-long investment in his own celebrity until his death-cum-martyrdom in Stalin's Gulag. Elżbieta Ostrowska's contribution in chapter 5 turns to Agnieszka Holland, connecting her fame as a rare instance of the female auteur director to her political activism. In chapter 6 on Krystyna Janda, who entered the limelight in Andrej Wajda's celebrated films Man of Marble and Man of Iron, Ronald Meyer traces the actor's evolution from feminism to multi-media brand and ultimately to "Matka Polka." In addition to providing a wealth of detail about Daniel Olbrychski's rise to fame (thanks, again, to Wajda), Goscilo's own contribution in chapter 9 argues that the actor's androgynous beauty made him, rather than his female costars, into an object of visual pleasure. Goscilo's analysis not only demonstrates how the actor fostered female and queer gazes but also critiques Laura Mulvey's by now axiomatic claim that viewers' pleasure arises primarily from the male gaze. Much like those on Poland, the three chapters of Starlight and Stargazers focused on the Soviet Union and Russia cover directing and acting as well as different forms of film celebrity. Chapter 2 on "The Bondarchuk Dynasty" (by Alexander Prokhorov and Elena Prokhorova) examines how directors representing the Stalin and the Putin generations rose to prominence by appealing not simply to viewers, but more importantly to the state. Olga Mukhortova's chapter 7, on Renata Litvinova, proves that her acting fame lies not in substance, but in style, allowing Litvinova to present two different personae at the same time—one that supports and another that challenges post-Soviet Russia's imperial ambitions. Chapter 10, by Rimgaila Salys, examines the dialectic of knowledge and mystery that generated Stalinist star status for actor Liubov' Orlova. Much like Goscilo's chapter on Olbrychski, all three of these essays point to limitations in theories of celebrity generated in the West (and largely on the basis of Hollywood) for understanding stardom and fandom in illiberal environments like Stalin's Soviet Union or Putin's Russia. The two chapters in this volume devoted to Czech film stars highlight their ability to blend national and international celebrity. Nicholas Hudac's contribution on Aňa Geislerová in chapter 3 argues that her acting career resuscitated an interwar model of specifically Czech celebrity for a global post-World War II environment, while Herbert Eagle's chapter 8 chronicles the volatile directing career of Jiri Menzel, a key figure in Czech New Wave cinema. On the contrary, the two chapters that treat Ukrainian screen stars demonstrate the need to separate more local forms of celebrity from the larger imperial context in which many post-socialist celebrities became famous. Tetyana Dovbnya's chapter 4 on Liudmila Gurchenko, for example, attributes the actor's initial stardom in the Soviet film Carnival Night to her ability to embody cultural otherness, a trait that later secured Gurchenko's Ukrainian fame via post-Soviet nostalgia. In the volume's final chapter, Anastasia Gordienko turns to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, whose television series A Servant of the People created a virtual platform for his very real political power, making him the "ultimate celebrity—possibly the greatest one in the world at the moment" (p. 322). As this overview of Starlight and Stargazers suggests, the volume's greatest strength is the diversity and depth of the case studies in Slavic celebrity that it presents. Although its treatment of the Slavic world may seem selective, the forms of fame treated in the volume—from movie star to state-sponsored director or political activist—are remarkably diverse. Moreover, many of the essays in the volume open up new avenues for theorizing celebrity not only in Eastern Europe but around the globe. Readers curious about theories of stardom, fandom, and spectatorship that go beyond the "excessively quoted and reductive" paradigms inspired by Hollywood cinema will find Starlight and Stargazers an invaluable resource, as will those interested in the phenomenon of celebrity outside the increasingly narrow confines of Western liberal democracy (p. 255).