Soviet and Post Soviet Cinema

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La llegada de Sergei M. Eisenstein a México en el mes de diciembre de 1930 supuso, para el ámbito artístico-cultural del país, un punto de inflexión en su desarrollo natural. Su vinculación con algunos de los artistas más importantes y trascendentales del momento y su particular visión del país logró fundir los anhelos mexicanos de conformación de una identidad nacional que se vio reproducida en su filme ¡Que Viva México!, una magnífica obra de arte que no vio la luz hasta algunas décadas después y que representa, a la postre, uno de los iconos de mexicanidad por excelencia. En este artículo analizamos, no sólo el filme, sino algunas de las relaciones que mantuvo el cineasta ruso con otras personalidades, en las cuales se basó para comprender la historia de un país que había dejado recientemente la lucha armada y se encontraba en un periodo de reconstrucción nacional. PALABRAS CLAVE: cine ruso, Eisenstein, arte mexicano, identidad nacional.

The article argues that post-Soviet cinematic representations of the Soviet past are inherently contradictory. Starting from chernukha cinema of Perestroika period, the classical cinematic operation of disavowal acquires specific historical articulation and becomes instrumental in sustaining 'sutured belief' about Soviet reality – an effective mode of conceptualizing the Soviet past in the conditions of the traumatic symbolic havoc of post-Soviet Russia. The article outlines the general conditions of spectatorial belief in the truth of cinematic representation and addresses the peculiar vicissitudes of this belief in the implied spectators of the late Soviet and post-Soviet cinema. The attention to the subconscious mechanisms brought forward by the cinematic medium situates Russian thinking about its history on the level of the primary processes and helps explain its imperviousness to rational contestations.

m y J o y schas t´e moe 2010 127 minutes D irec tor: S ergei Loznitsa S creenplay: S ergei Loznitsa Cinematography: Oleg Mutu S ound: Vladimir Golovnitsky Ar t D irec tion: K irill S huvalov Editor: D anielius Kok anauskis Producers: Heino Decker t, Oleg Kohan Produc tion Companies: a.ja.de.filmproduktion (Germany), S ota C inema Group (Ukraine), Huber t Bals Fund (Netherlands) Cast: Viktor Nemets (Georgy), Vladimir Golovin (old man), Olga S huvalova (young prostitute), Vlad Ivanov (major from Moscow), M aria Varsami (M aria), Aleksei Ver tkov (young

Referāts tapis laikā, kad scenārists Alvis Lapiņš strādāja kopā ar režisoru Pēteri Krilovu pie filmas "Uz spēles Latvija" . Referātā tiek apskatītas visas filmas, kas tapušas pēc Lapiņa scenārijiem, izvērtējot to dramaturģisko struktūru pēc mūsdienu scenāriju rakstīšanas principiem.

First interview with Andrei Tarkovsky on July 10, 1984, in Milan, a few hours after his press conference at which he announced that he would never return to the USSR. In the interview he talks inter alia about his relationship with Goskino, his film Nostalgia, responds to Solzhenitsyn's criticism of Rublev, and, for the first time, publicly reveals his intention to shoot The Sacrifice. The interview was broadcast in Russian on Radio Liberty on July 13 and 14, 1984.

This paper traces the history of an iconic Socialist Realist image—that of the worker, peasant, soldier, or leader viewed from below whilst gazing heroically into the symbolic dawn of a Socialist future—from its origins in mid-1920s Soviet Russia through its use on three banknotes in Communist China’s first renminbi series of 1949 to its effective dissolution in the iconography of Deng-era currency. It argues that this iconic type—familiar not only from Stalinist but also from Italian Fascist and German National Socialist imagery—arose initially as a consequence of the legitimation crisis provoked in the USSR by Lenin’s death in January 1924, and that it may have originated in cinema before spreading from there to photography and poster art. An examination especially of the film work of Dziga Vertov shows that the icon encodes in its visual syntax techniques of political, technological, and media pedagogy meant both to form the “new Soviet man” and to orient populations within a chain of symbolic identifications supporting the charismatic authority of their leaders. It is suggested that Mao’s documented decision to use this image on renminbi instead of his own otherwise ubiquitous portrait reflects a perception of the propagandistic value of this visual syntax, and that both Mao’s posthumous reappearance on Chinese currency and the icon’s transformation on fourth-series renminbi from class pairs gazing upward to ethnic pairs gazing laterally reflects, among other things, the Deng-era shift from a hieratic semantics of charismatic legitimation to a more sober strategy of legitimation by political and economic rationalization.

Данная работа продолжает цикл статей, посвящённых рассмотрению разнообразных форм присутствия и способов функционирования образов восточнославянского язычества в современной российской культуре. Во второй статье цикла речь идёт о проникновении языческих образов и мотивов в советский и российский кинематограф. Показано, что они начинают проникать на экран с 60-х годов XX в. Заметно, что советские режиссёры относились к языческим традициям с искренним интересом и симпатией. В современных российских фильмах, снятых при финансовой поддержке государства, язычество оценивается более критично, поскольку создателям фильмов приходится обосновывать необходимость крещения Руси. Но даже учитывая это обстоятельство, кинематографисты склонны искать в язычестве положительные черты. Поскольку интерес со стороны российской киноиндустрии к древнерусской истории возрастает, можно ожидать увеличения числа ярких языческих образов на экране. Развитие технологий, делающих создание фильмов доступным для независимых (непрофессиональных) режиссёров, позволяет прогнозировать большее разнообразие в оценках восточнославянского язычества в будущем.

This article examines Aleksei Balabanov’s unfinished film The American and the various accompanying texts that contribute to our understanding of its place in the filmmaker’s biography. A published script, a court case, unreleased film footage and the memories of participants exist as interpretations of this unrealised project. The American was a contributing factor to the acknowledged demarcation that divides Balabanov’s life and oeuvre into two distinct phases. Given Balabanov’s enduring popularity, it is also germane to discuss the afterlife of The American, as a completed version might add to the filmmaker’s cinematic legacy. The accumulated texts that accompany this unrealised project must also be acknowledged when discussing Balabanov’s other incomplete projects. In so doing, one gains perspective on the filmmaker’s present, and potentially his future, biography as Balabanov’s posthumous legacy remains fluid six years after his death.

In Russia, at the beginning of the 20th century, Siberian shaman is perceived as a fascinating fossil of humanity’s primitive stage. However, during the 1920s it becomes a symbol of active exploitation and a threatening figure for the State. From this perspective, shamanism was associated, and sometimes identified, with the kulak. It was necessary to reorganize epistemologically the ethnographic theory and to remodel visual stereotypes about primitive man, in order to make possible such an assimilation, which legitimated eventually bloody repressions. Far from obediently illustrating scientists’ watchwords, the avant-garde filmmakers took initiatives and, inventing original film devices, produced figures immediately usable for political struggle.

When Red Cowboys Fight for New Order: „Eastern“ – Genre as Processual Phenomenon in Cinema seen by Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance Concept

On the one hand film, genres are frequently perceived as clear and firmly determined categories, but on the other hand genres, they are extremely ambiguous and articulating their exact definition is a highly complicated process. Moreover, such definitions become inapplicable when we come across different approaches to genre cinema when exploring cinemas of various cultural environments. This master thesis aims to study ‘Easterns’, a genre which appeared in Soviet cinema in the late 1960s and experienced its boom between the 1970s and 1980s. This case study of adventurous and pathos-driven interpretations of the Russian Civil War will show the ways of perceiving and understanding genre phenomena in the USSR. In my text, I will bring a discrepancy between theoretical and historical approaches to genres into focus as well as highlight their problematical attempt to find a solid foundation for genre definition. I argue that 1) genres cannot be understood as essentiallistically determined concepts, and 2) it is necessary to leave the established genre theory patterns set mainly by the Anglo-American point of view. On a contrary, I believe it is necessary to consider genres as concepts that acquire their meaning by their actual use in language – i. e. in practice. Therefore, it is not possible to determine one particular definition of genres but it is necessary to comprehend them as processual categories with family resemblances among them. My research will study the ways in which Soviet discussion on a film influenced the development of local genre cinema. I will be interested in cultural and historical discourses as well as forms of articulating specific requirements for filmmaking, mass ethos, the relationship between state and cinema and the gradual formation of Eastern narrative. The thesis will work with mutual relationships among theoretical approaches dominant in the Soviet Union; formalism, revolutionary romanticism, Marxist dialectics or aesthetic-ideological requirements of socialist realism.

The last chapter of the master's thesis remains unfinished due to the impossibility to travel to Russia (from 2020 until today) and completing research in the archives.

Texte de présentation pour appel de fonds auprès de la Ville de Genève et de Fondations privées, afin de trouver des financements pour réaliser le ciné-concert du film Octobre d'Eisensteine. Le ciné-concert du film Octobre d'Eisenstein a été organisé par l'Association cinématographique "La Ligne Générale" et l'Orchestre d'Harmonie de l'Etat de Genève, un soutien financier a également été trouvé auprès de l'Association des amis du cinéma du Grütli à Genève.
Les objectifs du projet ont été les suivants :
— Mettre en valeur le patrimoine cinématographique soviétique à l’occasion du centenaire de la révolution russe d’octobre 1917, événement majeur de l’histoire contemporaine, et en particulier le film Octobre, emblématique des événements qu’il décrit au point de s’être longtemps substitué aux images d’archives en URSS.
— Proposer au public suisse romand une forme de représentation musicale qui rencontre un succès toujours croissant : le ciné-concert.
— Offrir une sonorisation originale du film Octobre spécialement réalisée pour l’occasion, sur la base de grandes oeuvres datant de l’époque de sa sortie ou en lien avec sa thématique
La projection a eu lieu à Genève au Bâtiment des forces motrices le samedi 14 octobre 2017 dans le cadre des 100 ans de la révolution russe, il y a eu 500 spectateurs. La semaine précédente le ciné-concert a été projeté à l'aula Rolex de l'EPFL à Lausanne avec 400 spectateurs.
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Presentation text for a call for funds for sponsors like the City of Geneva and various private foundations, in order to find fundings who will help to realize the film-concert "October" from Eisenstein. The film-concert "October" was organized by the Film Association "La Ligne Générale" and the Harmonic Orchestra of the State of Geneva, financial support was also found from the Association of Friends of the Grütli cinema in Geneva.
The objectives of the project were:
- Highlight the Soviet film heritage on the occasion of the centenary of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, a major event in contemporary history, and in particular the film October, emblematic of the events it describes, at the point of being for long time substituted for archival footage of the october revolution in the USSR.
- To offer the Swiss-French public a form of musical representation that meets ever-increasing success: the cine-concert (film projection with an harmonic orchestra).
- Offer an original sound of the October movie specially made for the occasion, based on great works dating from the time of its release or in connection with its theme
The screening took place in Geneva at the Motor Forces Building on Saturday, October 14, 2017 as part of the 100 years of the Russian Revolution, there were 500 spectators. The week before, the cinema-concert was screened at EPFL's Rolex aula in Lausanne with 400 spectators.

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The paper is based on the visual and sociological interpretation of the specific element of the Soviet everyday life within the period from 1950s till 1980s. From the very beginning, clothing styles and images were used by Communist authorities to impose some important ideological trends on society. There was collectivism, modesty, simplicity, unselfishness, obedience, respect for authority, and hard work in addition to a variety of features of Soviet morality, as well as even more controversial Soviet ideas. Popular culture in the Soviet Union, especially cinema and television, contained both entertainment and propaganda in different proportions. The presented analysis of stories from the selected Soviet movies concerns the specific perspective of the social identity creation, lifestyle construction and imitation strategies of the common Soviet citizens. Social differentiation within clothing styles as symbols of status is shown rather frequently in the movies, especially in the earlier period, as a way to delineate social and moral borders between working class, on the one side, and intelligentsia, on the other.

Contemporary film theorists tend to link the character of New Romanian Cinema with Italian neorealism or the British “Kitchen Sink,” which uses a term borrowed from the theatre to describe the gritty look of films made in 1960s. If the Romanian New Wave may also have been influenced by local (that is, non-Western European) filmmaking, this is almost exclusively identified with the cinema of “dissident” directors like Lucian Pintilie, Dan Pița, and Mircea Daneliuc by virtue of the politically contestatory position of films like Reconstruction (Pintilie, 1969). In this article I argue that singling out dissident auteurs and the West as progenitors of New Romanian Cinema personifies a politicized view of the socialist past. This view subsumes the character of the movement to the neoliberal project of the European Union, seeking to enact a Manichean rupture between Romania’s socialist past and its capitalist present. In opposition to this view, I argue that the Romanian New Wave is influenced by the 1980s’ cinema of socialist realist origin, as well as by Soviet chernukha cinema and the Eastern European work of Micklos Jancso and Bela Tarr, which constituted an influence for the new generation of Romanian directors growing up in the late 1980s.

This study examines images of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine in American movies. The question is whether political factors affect cinematic representation of these ethnically, politically, culturally, religiously, linguistically, and economically different post-Soviet countries. A related question is how the portrayal of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine in Hollywood films affects Americans’ perceptions of these countries. This paper analyzes more than 100 movies and TV films from the Internet Movie Database and conducts a content analysis of principal motion pictures, such as Air Force One (1997), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), GoldenEye (1995), Everything is Illuminated (2004), The Peacemaker (1997), The Saint (1997), The Sum of All Fears (2002), and Lord of War (2004), to identify main Kazakh, Russian, and Ukrainian-related themes and heroes. Analysis of the movies shows that they often overlook significant political, ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic differences among these countries. Their comparison with academic studies shows that most of the movies, incorrectly present Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine as economically and technologically backward, extremely anti-American and anti-Semitic countries, which have pervasive “Russian mafia” and widespread female prostitution. In spite of such incorrectness, most of these movies are regarded as politically correct by American filmmakers, movie-goers, and film critics. This study attributes the politically correct incorrectness in Hollywood portrayals of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine to such factors as US internal politics, which confines political and cultural sensitivity to racial and religious minorities, relatively small and politically non-influential Kazakh, Russian, and Ukrainian communities in the United States, and the fact that these countries are not regarded as major US allies. In conclusion, the study discusses a negative effect that distorted portrayals of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine in Hollywood movies, which are one of principal sources of information about these countries for Americans, have on their perceptions of the post-Soviet states.

O cinema da escola do realismo socialista não desapareceu após a renovação artística que a cinematografia soviética apresentou nos anos 1950 e 1960. Sempre encontrou espaço no cinema histórico, em especial o de tema mais ufanista de todos: a Grande Guerra Patriótica de 1941-45. Filmes como Ozvobozhdenie, de 1969, ou Bitva za Moskvu, de 1985, de Yuri Ozerov, apresentam composições, ângulos, detalhes derivados das pinturas feitas por artistas do realismo socialista imediatamente após a guerra, especialmente entre os anos de 1945 e 1953, anos em que Stalin esteve à frente do país e Zhdanov, falecido em 1949, objetivava ditar os caminhos da arte. Por mais que parecesse fruto do desejo de uns poucos homens no Kremlin, essas pinturas estavam ligadas a uma estética que pouco possuía de revolucionária e que pode ser facilmente identificada na segunda metade do século XIX – o realismo/naturalismo. Suas raízes são profundas. A análise dessas reminiscências e ciclos de repetições visuais gerou vários modelos teóricos ao longo do tempo. Alguns já sofreram releituras e reformulações. Os desdobramentos desses diagnósticos baseados em indícios permitem apreciar as várias facetas das imagens. Em especial, o que a iconologia de Warburg e a história social da arte de Hauser tem a dizer.

The  key-note paper analyzes the works of the senior women-filmmakers  of  Central  Asia  as  well  as  the younger  generation  of  female  film directors  of  the  region  which  featured  the  marital  relations,  the  hierarchy  and the gender rules between family members.

From the study: The Cuban Revolution in the Symbolic World of Russianness, the cinematic reference
On the transcultural condition & the question: what Cuba did for Russia?
Kuba: Three Films - Three Filmmakers
(IA Kuba, Siberiada & Generation P - Kalatozov, Konchalovsky and Ginzburg)

Canadian Journal of Film Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, fall (2016): 82-103 [Actual publication date: June 2017]

Aleksei Balabanov, Sergei Sel’ianov and their production company CTB played an important role in the cultivation and propagation of the bandit film cycle in Russian cinema. In as much, Brother (1997) and Dead Man’s Bluff (2005), act as bookends for this productive cycle and refract the Russian bandit cultural mythos. As the political and social situation in Russia evolved, so too did the films that glamorized and refracted this period of lawlessness. By placing Dead Man’s Bluff within the context of the bandit cycle, it is then possible to interpret the film as a postmodern pastiche in which Balabanov critiques and parodies the films that he and CTB popularized – once again providing a cinematic auto-citation, for which Balabanov was so well-known.

Статья посвящена опыту работы Исторического киноклуба РХТУ им. Д.И. Менделеева в 2021 г. Кинематограф играет большую роль в формировании исторических представлений общества, что необходимо учитывать в процессе преподавания истории. Формат исторического киноклуба создает множество возможностей использования кинопроизведений для более глубокого понимания истории. В статье рассматриваются формы работы Исторического киноклуба РХТУ, принципы подбора фильмов, программа киноклуба «Образы Гражданской войны в советском кинематографе 1930–1970-х гг.». Анализируются первые итоги работы киноклуба и результаты анкетирования его участников.

EXPERIENCE OF THE HISTORICAL CINEMA CLUB IN D. MENDELEEV UNIVERSITY OF CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY OF RUSSIA
The article is devoted to the experience of the Historical Cinema Club in RCTU in 2021. Cinematography plays an important role in the formation of historical perceptions of society, which must be taken into account in the process of teaching history. The Historical Film Club format creates many opportunities for using films to gain a deeper understanding of history. The article discusses the forms of work of the RCTU Historical Cinema Club, the principles of selecting films, the program of the cinema club "Images of the Civil War in Soviet Cinematography of the 1930-1970s." The first results of the film club's work and the results of the questionnaire survey of its participants are analyzed.

*Junior Yr Undergrad* The issue of “fatherlessness” has been a legitimate epidemic in Europe after the massive loss of male lives in World War II.  The impact of this ‘fatherlessness’ on the family unit has been a recurring theme in many Central European films and is associated with the development of a “metaphysics of absence” within the dialectic of the narratives of these films.  A possible explanation for this recurring theme has been provided by the journalist, Vladimir Chernov, who maintains that country’s leaders and screen personalities compensated as virtual fathers.  I would like to suggest that directors also have an impulse toward concretizing their “message” through auteurist guidance and support that helps build a structured relationship with their spectator. They too become a surrogate father for a society whose family units all too often are left bereft of ‘real’ father figures.

El presente ensayo propone investigar el trabajo con archivos en el cine documental, así como comprender de qué manera ese trabajo puede operar en el rescate, en la creación y en la transformación de memorias colectivas. El punto de partida para este ensayo es la película El último Bolchevique, del cineasta francés Chris Marker.

EDINBURGH University Press 4o. Ioffe, "The Discourses of Love." 4r. see the context described in Mazierska, ,,Escape into a Different person, Escape into a Different Reality." 42. Nabokov, Desþøir, tz7. 43. As described in media dispersed ar the Cannes Film Festival.

This article focuses on A Stone Cross (Kaminnyi khrest), a 1968 film by the Ukrainian director Leonid Osyka based on the work of the Ukrainian modernist writer Vasyl' Stefanyk, including the eponymous short story. While this film is regarded in the countries of the former Soviet bloc as one of the highest accomplishments of the poetic cinema movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, it has so far received little attention in the West. The present article examines the film-maker's choices made in adapting the literary texts, and especially the film's visual language, including its choice of setting, camerawork, editorial style and use of professional and non-professional actors, and the way these choices contribute to the work's overall dramatic impact. A key theme in this film, which narrates a peasant family's decision to emigrate to Canada in the late 1890s and the severance of its symbolic ties with the traditional rural community, is the deep identity crisis precipitated by the social upheavals of modernity and the universal existential implications of its theme of ‘petrified liminality’. The film's restrained, sombre style is contrasted with the colourful exotic world presented in Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, the best-known work of Ukrainian poetic cinema, and the experimental minimalist approach of the 1960 Japanese film Naked Island, which strongly influenced Osyka during his student years.

While the "ethnic" cinematic traditions of the Soviet Union are receiving increasing recognition in recent years, they remain little studied and little appreciated as examples of World War II-centered films, even though one such non-Russian Soviet republic, Ukraine, provided a key locus both in the establishment of the genre of World War II documentary (in the work of Alexander Dovzhenko) and in the making of the paradigm of guerrilla fighter ("partisan") films with Mark Donskoi's The Rainbow (1943, rel. 1944). 1 The latter film established the presentation of Nazi-occupied Soviet territory through the fate of women characters that became a paradigmatic feature of a large number of both films and literary works. It also gave us the classic images of the noble suffering maternal female character (Natalia Uzhvii's Olena), the immoral hedonist collaborator (Nina Alisova's Pusia), and the selfless partisan fighter (Ol'ha, Pusia's sister, played by Vera Ivashova, best known for her role as Ol'ga Danilovna, the Novgorod beauty in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky). It is Dovzhenko's films, however, that inaugurated a Ukrainian response to the events of the war. With his trilogy of wartime documentary films, for all the genre and content limitations of official Soviet wartime chronicle, he built narrative and visual bridges to the first golden age of Ukrainian cinema during the VUFKU years, * I would like to thank Dr. Sander Brouwer, the organizer of the conference from which this volume has resulted, as well as the fellow conference participants, for the helpful feedback. 1 With the exception of Donskoi's Rainbow, a widely acknowledged classic, no Ukrainian World War II films are even mentioned in such influential and important studies as Woll 2000 or Youngblood 2007.

AK-47: Kalashnikov (2020) is a biographical film about Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (1919–2013), the inventor and designer of the AK-47 automatic rifle. This Russian film, released in February of last year, follows the young Kalashnikov as he is bombarded by Germans during WWII and is interspersed with flashbacks of his childhood. Disturbed by the failure of a newly designed gun that nearly gets a comrade killed when it jams, he examines the parts and lists out various problems with the new design.