About

Robert Efird is an associate professor of Russian in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech. He is part of the faculty at the university, located at 305 Major Williams Hall, Blacksburg, VA. His academic role involves teaching and research related to Russian language and literature. Efird is recognized as a faculty expert in Russian Languages and Literatures and is a member of the Graduate Faculty in Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures. His work includes academic contributions to the field of Russian studies, with media mentions such as an article on Andrei Tarkovsky's film 'Ivan's Childhood.' Efird's contact information includes an email address (refird@vt.edu) and a phone number (540-231-5361). His professional focus is on Russian language, literature, and cultural studies within the context of his department at Virginia Tech.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Art
• Literature
• Art history
• Psychology
• Biology
• Fishery
• World Wide Web
• History

Selected publications

• Introduction

  Intellect Books · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Literature
  • Art history

  Andrei Tarkovsky: 'Ivan's Childhood'; Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1962 Ivan’s Childhood marked a pivotal moment for Soviet ‘poetic cinema’ and launched the career of an artist now considered a towering figure of Russian culture. A thorough analysis of this debut film through a close examination of the narrative structure, stylistic approach and philosophical underpinnings 25 b/w film stills.

  PublisherDOI

• 1 1. The Flesh of Time: Solaris and the Chiasmic Image

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Art
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• The Flesh of Time: Solaris and the Chiasmic Image

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Art
  • Art history

  This chapter explores <italic>Solaris</italic>’s chiasmatic interpenetration of the real and the phantasmatic in the context of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh defined as the non-physical substrate of the visible world and the virtual. Thanks to its genre of science fiction, Efird argues, <italic>Solaris</italic> accomplishes more convincingly the physical realization of the characters’ dream imagery, which vividly exemplifies Tarkovsky’s cinematic materialism. Besides numerous scenes with mirrors, the dynamic chiasm of the flesh, which is both physical and spiritual, fully manifests itself in the ambiguous figure of Hari who is simultaneously the object of Kelvin’s memory as well as the self-conscious subject on her own.

  PublisherDOI

• Final Words, Final Shots: Kurosawa, Bortko and the Conclusion of Dostoevsky’s &lt;em&gt;Idiot&lt;/em&gt;

  CLCWeb Comparative Literature and Culture · 2019-07-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  In their article "Final Words, Final Shots: Kurosawa, Bortko, and the Conclusion of Dostoevsky’s Idiot" Robert O. Efird and Saera Yoon discuss film adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novel. Both in his homeland and abroad, the major works of Fyodor Dostoevsky have largely made for disappointing film adaptations. This article examines the cultural diversity and aesthetic motivations underlying two very different adaptations of his novel Idiot, with particular attention to the concluding scenes. Both Akira Kurosawa and Vladimir Bortko follow the novelist's lead by hinting at some form of hope and future redemption amidst the tragedy but, for different reasons, they both fail to capture the rich ambiguity and creative ambivalence of Dostoevsky's final words. As the authors argue, the novelist's fluid dialogic aesthetic tends to disappear in visual adaptations, yet paradoxically thrives when released into new contexts less dependent on fidelity to his words. These two adaptations, despite their relative success, demonstrate the inherent difficulty of cinematizing the dynamics of Dostoevsky's art.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sergei Parajanov's Differential Cinema

  Film-Philosophy · 2018-09-25 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The films of Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990) remain some of the most stylistically unique in the history of the medium and easily place him within the pantheon of the world's great filmmakers. This article offers a new perspective on Parajanov's art through a detailed examination of the two works at the center of his oeuvre, The Colour of Pomegranates (1969) and The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985). In addition to their undeniable aesthetic value, these films may be appreciated as meaningful discourse on our conceptions of time, perception, and identity. Like Parajanov's other films, they dismantle the perceptual and narrative structure of classical cinema in order to stimulate awareness of an expressly raw layer of reality beneath what we customarily take to be static, indivisible essences or identities. With specific attention to the correlation of difference, repetition, and perception, this article also focuses on the effects this presentation of perpetual flux and variation has on consciousness and subjectivity within the films.

  PublisherDOI

• Andrej Tarkovskij: Klassiker – Классик – Classic – Classico

  publish.UP (University of Potsdam) · 2016-01-01

  article

  Vom 18. bis 20. September 2014 versammelten sich an der Universität Potsdam kultur- und filmwissenschaftlich arbeitende Wissenschaftler zu einem Andrej Tarkovskij gewidmeten Symposium, dem ersten internationalen. Die 25 Teilnehmer kamen nämlich aus neun Ländern. Dadurch, dass nicht wenige auch eine – wie man heute sagt – „Migrationsbiographie“ haben, potenzierte sich die durch die jeweils unterschiedliche Herkunft bedingte Multiperspektivik, zu der jedoch der Modus der Wissenschaftlichkeit ein deutlich relativierendes Korrektiv bildet. Der vorliegende Band enthält im Wesentlichen die dort vorgestellten Beiträge, aber auch die der Fachleute, die nicht persönlich hatten nach Potsdam kommen können.

  Publisher

• Andrej Tarkovskij: Klassiker – Классик – Classic – Classico : Beiträge zum internationalen Tarkovskij-Symposium an der Universität Potsdam ; Band 1

  2016-01-01

  article

  Vom 18. bis 20. September 2014 versammelten sich an der Universitat Potsdam kultur- und filmwissenschaftlich arbeitende Wissenschaftler zu einem Andrej Tarkovskij gewidmeten Symposium, dem ersten internationalen. Die 25 Teilnehmer kamen namlich aus neun Landern. Dadurch, dass nicht wenige auch eine – wie man heute sagt – „Migrationsbiographie“ haben, potenzierte sich die durch die jeweils unterschiedliche Herkunft bedingte Multiperspektivik, zu der jedoch der Modus der Wissenschaftlichkeit ein deutlich relativierendes Korrektiv bildet. Der vorliegende Band enthalt im Wesentlichen die dort vorgestellten Beitrage, aber auch die der Fachleute, die nicht personlich hatten nach Potsdam kommen konnen.

  Publisher

• Poetry and film: artistic kinship between Arsenii and Andrei Tarkovsky

  Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema · 2015-09-02 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Figures of Iurodstvo in Tarkovsky’s The Passion According to Andrei

  Canadian-American Slavic Studies · 2015-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Variations on the holy fool recur throughout the films of Andrei Tarkovsky but the figure of the iurodivyi is perhaps never more pervasive or critical to the task at hand than in his second feature-length film, The Passion According to Andrei . This article examines holy foolishness as an essential aspect of the artistic personality in Tarkovsky’s depiction of Andrei Rublev, Boriska, and Theophanes the Greek. In addition, Tarkovsky’s idiosyncratic narrative style, with its close similarities to Deleuze’s description of the time-image, exhibits similarly oppositional and provocative patterns. As this examination finds, the holy fool may also function as a figure for the overarching narrative as it strives, through various means, to push the viewer from complacent modes of thought and stimulate a more direct, less spatialized perception of time or duration.

  PublisherDOI

• Solzhenitsyn, Tarkovsky and the coarse spirituality of Carlos Reygadas’s<i>Japón</i>

  Transnational Cinemas · 2014-01-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  References to classic works of world cinema are integral to Carlos Reygadas’s complex aesthetic, and often amplify overarching metaphysical concerns. His debut feature Japón (2002), though less overt in its citations of earlier works than the later films, is heavily infused with literary and cinematic influences whose determinate effect on theme and architectonics reveals a surprisingly specific transcultural orientation. Although the cultural heterogeneity of global art cinema provides the primary interface for many ideas and techniques developed in the film, this article demonstrates that a more specifically directed transnational approach may uncover new discursive and thematic levels. Japón is in fact a loose adaptation of a story by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and follows closely the Russian author’s construction of a spiritual ideal. The common themes also resonate in the film’s exploration of non-chronological time, where an aesthetic dialogue with Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky has a decisive impact on Reygadas’s own auteurist signature. With Gilles Deleuze’s theories on the time-image as a point of reference, this analysis examines the impact of Tarkovsky’s work on transcendental temporal forms in Japón and the film’s deeper integration of the physical and the spiritual.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Anna Rothkoegel

  2 shared

• Dan Gorenstein

  2 shared

• Дмитрий Салынский

  2 shared

• Norbert Franz

  University of Potsdam

  2 shared

• Eva Binder

  Universität Innsbruck

  2 shared

• Manuele Cecconello

  2 shared

• Natasha Synessios

  2 shared

• Ирина Градинари

  2 shared

Labs

• Department of Modern and Classical Languages and LiteraturesPI