A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood
with essays by Hannah Frank and Esther Leslie
152 pages hardcover
(Distributed by Artbook|D.A.P.) Buy $35

A World Redrawn is Zoe Beloff’s exploration of Sergei Eisenstein and Bertolt Brecht’s experiences in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, what their time in Hollywood meant to them then and what it might mean to us now. Beloff focuses on two unrealized films written during this time: "Glass House" by Eisenstein and "A Model Family" by Brecht.

This book reproduces many important and little-known documents from the period, including a large selection of previously unpublished drawings by Eisenstein discovered by Beloff in the State Archive of Literature in Moscow and facsimile reproductions of the writings of Eisenstein and Brecht as they contemplate the politics and culture of Hollywood.

Beloff created three films in connection with this project and the book includes stills and screenplays for these films as well as links to watch the films online. Two scholarly essays have been commissioned for this project: an essay by Hannah Frank on the affinities of American and Soviet animation during this time period and a meditation on the role of laughter in the work of Brecht by the Walter Benjamin scholar Esther Leslie.




Sergei Eisenstein drawing for the film Glass House, 1926-1947





Glass House, 2014
Written and directed by Zoe Beloff, inspired by Sergei Eisenstein’s notes for a movie to be titled "Glass House"




Bertolt Brecht, journal entry, October 1947.




Albert Grass The Adventures of a Dreamer
Published October 2010
56 pages in full color
Buy $20

The twenty-five pictures in this book comprise the dream journal of Albert Grass, founder of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society. "The Strange Adventures of a Dreamer," a hand-drawn prototype for a comic book, appears to have been created by Albert Grass over a period of time from perhaps 1936 to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It seems possible that Grass originally intended "The Dreamer" as a comic book hero in the mold of "The Spirit", or even "Superman" with extraordinary powers but this conception quickly changed. By episode three "The Dreamer" loses his ability to fly, landing on the ground with a loud "ouch!". He remains earthbound and the work becomes a more serious investigation into his own psychic life.

Many of Albert Grass' anxieties speak directly to us today. Grass suffered the aftereffects of a brutal war. He worried about his neighbors being evicted. He felt the guilt of an artist who feels he should be more deeply engaged in a struggle for social justice. Previously unpublished, this facsimile edition makes available for the first time an early attempt to use the language of the comic book to graphically manifest the unconscious.




Adventures of a Dreamer, 2010
(from the book Albert Grass The Adventures of a Dreamer)
10 1/4 x 7 3/4 inches
Pigment Print
edition of 12




Belle Epoque/Je t'Aime, 2010
(from the book Albert Grass The Adventures of a Dreamer)
10 1/4 x 15 3/4 inches
Pigment Print
edition of 12




Palace of Fun, 2010
(from the book Albert Grass The Adventures of a Dreamer)
10 1/4 x 15 3/4 inches
Pigment Print
edition of 12




The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle
Published July 2009
128 pages with 75 color illustrations and DVD
With texts by: Aaron Beebe, Zoe Beloff, Amy Herzog and Norman Klein.
Buy $30

On the afternoon of August 28th 1909 Sigmund Freud visited Coney Island's famous Dreamland amusement park. A hundred years later this lively and imaginative book examines his legacy in Coney Island. It begins with Norman Klein's reconstruction of his actual visit. However Freud's real impact appears to have come later with the founding of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society. Zoe Beloff conjures up the world of this unique Society, whose forward-thinking attitude flourished from1926 through the early 1970s. The Society's members, most of them working people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, wished to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. She explores their activities that included recreating their dreams on film and discusses the role of the society's visionary founder Albert Grass who attempted to rebuild Dreamland according to Freud's theory of dream formation.

The book is lavishly illustrated with 75 full color pictures of never before seen photographs, drawings and documents that shed new light on Coney Island's mythic history. Included with the book is a DVD compilation of nine of the Society's "Dream Films". View the Society's award winning "Dream Films"




The Somnambulists: A Compendium of Source Material
114 pages with black and white illustrations and DVD
Buy $20

The Somnambulists is a collection of essays and images that inspired Beloff's video installation, "The Somnambulists" 2008. Comprised of five miniature wooden theaters into which moving images are projected, her work centers on the idea of "staging the unconscious". Each theater presents a hysterical drama. These include "History of a Fixed Idea" and "A Modern Case of Possession" in which two patients of the famous French psycho-pathologist Pierre Janet, express their delusions in song. Other theaters present the ghostly specters of actual hysterics filmed by doctors a hundred years ago.

The texts and images included in the book illuminate the complex interweaving of ideas from psychology, writing, performance, art, and moving-image technology at the end of the 19th century. It begins with an introduction to the "Players," brief biographies of the scholars, artists, and performers who appear in this volume. The texts include Pierre Janet's case study of the writer Raymond Roussel, the Surrealists celebration of hysteria as the greatest poetical invention of the 19th century in "The Fiftieth Anniversary of Hysteria" and the pioneering psychic researcher Frederic W.H. Myers' commentary on Janet's contribution to the discovery of the unconscious. Also included are rarely seen photographs by Albert von Schrenck Notzing of the celebrated dream dancer Magdelaine G.




History of a Fixed Idea, 2008
pigment print
54 x 36 inches
Edition of 8


For more information about the artist, please visit her website at www.zoebeloff.com.