Politics of Memory and Cinematography in Modern Russia: the October Revolution and the Civil War (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Militarization of the Past in Russian Popular Historical Films
This paper is devoted to the problem of the militarization of culture in modern Russia. The two key scientific fields are public history and the politics of memory. Firstly, based on the official documents and statements of authorities, the paper will characterize the relations between the state and Russian cinema as well as the role of history and historical films in the contemporary politics of memory. Secondly, after identifying the role of popular cinema in Russia, the paper will explore the characteristics of historical periods in popular films, based on the hypothesis that the Russian past is mostly represented around or inside war, while the criticism of war is becoming less and less important for popular cinema
Between History and Memory: Cultural War in Contemporary Russian and Ukrainian Cinema
2020
Any approach to the past tailors our perception of the present, which is in turn inevitably elusive and unstable. The present is a site of contestation between memory and history, as well as a site for recounting the distant past by reflecting it through the prism of the present. The transition from the Soviet Union to independent states in 1991 triggered tensions within these newly created nation-states, with the collective and individual past being given a range of new interpretations. The connection between memory and identity obtained a renewed force. Russian ideologists have often considered Ukraine as an inalienable part of Russia; the disintegration of the Soviet Union implied only a formal separation in a common Russian worldview. Meanwhile, the new national policy of Ukraine was frequently oriented towards independence and closer cooperation with the European Union. Contrasting memories about the past contributed to the tension between the two Slavic peoples, which, paradox...
The Civil War and Revolution in Stalinist Films. Cult Films, Evasiveness and Clichés
Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 2014
Having as a starting point the fact that the Stalinist cinematography played the role of an institution in producing history, the paper proposes analysis of films which tackle the Civil War and the Russian Revolution. Regardless of what films we take into account, whether the cult films of the Soviet cinematography-October (1927) directed by S. Eisenstein or The End of St. Petersburg (1927) directed by V. Pudovkin; some famous adaptations-And Quiet Flows the Don (1930) or Chapaev (1934); films inspired by historical figures-Baltic Deputy (1936) and Kotovsky (1942)-we point out to patterns, related to war, time and memory. The analyzed films reflect a peculiar way of building history, which reveals facets of Stalinist era. On one hand, Stalinist art and rhetoric of the '30s install a temporal hierarchy of high importance for the Soviet Union-designating the October Revolution and Russian Civil War as a crucial moment, a variation of the Great Time in Mircea Eliade's understanding, which was at the beginning, but also the celebrated paradigm of the new history, projected into the future (Clark 2000, 39-40). On the other hand, Socialist Realism established the basis of what proved to be a fruitful system of using renowned heroes from the collective mentality in order to canonize them through ideological fictionalization, historicizing and film adaptation, with all subsequent mythologizing mutations, so that a greater impact on the masses would be acquired 1. Our main concern is to identify the ways in which the following aspects are articulated in films: legitimacy of the Stalinist regime and related myths (great family and variations of "father" and "son" relationship, graveside oaths, picking up the banner, (female) martyr, etc.), representation of The Civit War and Revolution.
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.
The Civil War and Revolution in Stalinist Films
Having as a starting point the fact that the Stalinist cinematography played the role of an institution in producing history, the paper proposes analysis of films which tackle the Civil War and the Russian Revolution.
The imperial trace: recent Russian cinema
2009
One issue that separates this book from other publications on recent Russian cinema is 5 its elaborative framework of Empire. Nancy Condee approaches contemporary Russian filmmaking through an 'imperial trace', which she attaches to six filmmakers who have come to signify Russian cinema in the post-Soviet era. The book is divided into nine chapters; six chapters are devoted to each individual filmmaker and the rest to an introduction, a discussion of Russian cinema in the post-Soviet era, and a conclusion. The 10 most important part of the book is, however, the introduction, which deals with major developments in literature on empire, nation and nationhood, and it is here that Condee establishes her interpretive framework for the analysis of her filmmakers. She then proceeds to contextualise post-Soviet Russian cinema by examining audience figures and changing viewing patterns, which have progressed from regular cinema visits to a frag-15 mented consumption of cinema. As such, the introduction provides a good guide for newcomers to the tumult of events that has come to signify postcommunist Russian cinema. In the following six chapters, Condee analyses her chosen filmmakers: Nikita Mikhalkov, Kira Muratova, Vadim Abdrashitov and Aleksandr Mindadze, Aleksandr 20 Sokurov, Aleksei German, and Aleksei Balabanov. For each filmmaker Condee offers biographical details, training background and awards received. While such information is often delivered as superfluous, adding little fuel to the fire of textual/authorial analysis (beyond highlighting that a certain section of audiences, or of the film industry, likes some films more than others), Condee certainly makes the most of, for example, the 25 educational foundation of the filmmakers. This is not new with regard to the study of Russian cinema, but it is highly developed here and put to good use thanks to the way in which Condee relates such details to the imperial context that she also develops. While Condee's analysis of these six filmmakers does not divert significantly from other accounts, her concept of empire in framing Russian cinema as cultural production 30 does. Scholarship on Russian cinema has in recent times been blessed with publications that track cross-cultural endeavours on screen, for example, Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema (Norris and Torlone, 2008) and Russia and Its Other(s) on Film (Hutchings, 2008). Through its search for a framework that captures the postcommunist transition, The Imperial Trace should be seen as a prolongation of this development: 35 since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet cinema has evolved into Russian cinema, leaving the cinema of the other former Soviet republics untouched. However, Condee's account of the last 50 years of Soviet and Russian cinema is not preoccupied with the reformation of the other cinemas of the post-Soviet space; instead, it seeks to understand how Soviet Russian cinema became Russian cinema. The Imperial Trace aims to 40 explore how the condition of empire has influenced Russian filmmakers, or, as Condee Studies in European Cinema, 2014 RSEU 973699 QA: KS
The Russian Cinema of the Dissolution
The paper takes the issue of Russian reckoning cinema after 1989. This current can be defined as comprising the films which try to lay the foundations of a new narrative about the Soviet Union (alternative to the dominant narrative). The authors reflect on the specificity of the filmmakers' critical attitude towards the previous system. The story of the break-up of the Soviet Union turns to be a story of the great catastrophe -the tragedy of the whole society, abandoned by hypocritical intelligentsia and deceived by political elites.
According to cultural memory theory, cultural tools such as texts and symbols transmit the knowledge of meaningful historical events to groups. These cultural tools reproduce history by cultivating narratives that are relevant in a given time, and thus reflect the ongoing concerns over memory. The purpose of communicating significant turning points in a nation's history is to create a system of values, a self-image and a continuity of a nation. Films are considered to be both textual and visual representation of cultural memory. Since memory and commemoration of the Second World War have gone through many changes, one has to analyze how cultural memory has influenced the portrayal as well as the reception of the event. The aim of this master's thesis is to bring out what kind of narratives and symbols are used in the film Stalingrad, which was produced in 2013, in order to foster patriotism in contemporary Russia. Stalingrad, directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk, screenplay by Ilya Tilkin and Sergey Snezhkin, is all-time highest-grossing war feature film in Russia that portrays the Battle of Stalingrad. Discourse analysis is chosen as method of the research, which will incorporate narrative analysis, intertextual analysis and iconographic analysis. The research reveals that in Stalingrad influences cultural memory by using new technology, music, simple plot and by creating emotional attachment to characters. By applying four main narratives that are products of wartime portrayal of the Second World War, but which have their roots in the pre-Soviet Russian culture: "holy war" "war to save motherland," "a war to save Russian civilization," "a battle to the death," the film reinforces patriotism. The continuity of the Russian state and the connection with Old Russian culture is transmitted in the film through the use of Orthodox symbols and intertextuality with previous war films and literature. Stalingrad's dialogue with Western films contests various narratives; on the other hand it justifies Russian patriotism by showing that it does not differ from American patriotism.