Russian Film Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Edited by Rimgaila Salys The early years of the twenty-first century have been an exciting transitional period in Russian cinema, as the industry recovered from the crises of the late 1990s and again stepped onto the global stage. During... more

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- Russian Studies, Film Studies, Film Theory, Contemporary Art

The Empire Strikes Back. Russian National Cinema After 2005The paper provides critical analysis of the latest wave of Russian national cinema (2005-2013), considered one of key instruments of Vladimir Putin’s nation-building cultural policy. The analysis, focused mostly on historical film and war film, reveals the concept of an ‘imperial nation’ as the main concept underlying this policy. The new Russian nation-concept is calculated to binding elements from two former Russian imperial traditions: tradition of the Russian Empire and the Soviet tradition, thus trying to overcome the identity crisis in contemporary Russia. Imperium kontratakuje. Rosyjskie kino narodowe po 2005 rokuArtykuł zajmuje się krytyczną analizą filmów najnowszej fali rosyjskiego kina narodowego (2005-2013), uważanej tu za jedno z kluczowych narzędzi polityki kulturalnej Władimira Putina obliczonej na budowanie narodu. Autorzy artykułu skupiają się przede wszystkim na filmie historycznym i wojennym, odsłaniając p...

- by Tomasz Rawski
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- Russian Studies, Art, Russian Nationalism, Nationalism

«Бриколаж режиссера Балабановa» содержит интервью, документы, воспоминания, а также ряд аналитических текстов, так или иначе связанных с кинонаследием Алексея Балабанова. В книге представлены интервью и мемуары коллег и друзей (Сергея Сельянова, Сергея Астахова) университетских товарищей режиссера, и др. Впервые публикуются фотографии режиссера времен учебы, и некоторые документы, в т.ч. его студенческий аттестат. В стиле бриколажа (создания арт-объекта из подручных средств) книга сочетает документы со статьями разных авторов, посвящённых творчеству мастера. Это сочетание несочетаемого и создает портрет Алексея Балабанова.

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes's 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes's philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev's controversial film. This examination of Leviathan's three unique iterations elucidates the evolution of philosophy and the solution to a world devoid of authority. An autopsy of Leviathan's allegorical beached corpse invites the individual to create and recognize their own authority and purpose, thus fabricating a fourth transformation of Leviathan.

- by Graham C . Goff
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- Philosophy, Postmodernism, Thomas Hobbes, Biblical Theology

An essay on Alexander Sokurov Cinema

- by Sami Astan
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- Film Studies, Russian Film, Alexander Sokurov
- by Olga Mukhortova
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- Russian Film

В этом, втором, издании я придерживаюсь того же подхода: объединяю разнородные тексты и визуальные образы, чтобы сохранить их для последующих поколений студентов, исследователей и любителей кино. В частности, в новом издании уделяется особое внимание свердловскому периоду жизни режиссера, более подробно рассматриваются его неоконченные и нереализованные проекты, а также вниманию читателей предлагаются статьи кинокритиков и интервью с друзьями, родственниками и коллегами Балабанова, которые содержат дополнительные биографические сведения.

- by Frederick H White
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- Russian Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, Russian Film, Cinema
- by Giuliano Vivaldi
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- Russian Film, Documentary Film, Russian Cinema, Soviet and Post Soviet Cinema

This analytical essay hopes to provide insights regarding how poetic documentary mode is effected by the change that it is facing currently. With this, it is important to acknowledge that cinema has been through many changes in the past, which have enabled explorations that lead to the creation of genres, movements, and conventions. There would be information about both the positive and negative impact of this change, discovering the challenges and perhaps advantages for poetic documentary, which is a mode that demands viewer’s full engagement in the age of digital media convergence. Using two documentaries (Man With A Movie Camera and Samsara) from two different era, this essay would discuss about their roles in representing the impact of changes in cinema as well as how poetic documentary mode evolved with these changes.

- by Chynthia Wijaya
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- Ethnography, Film Analysis, Documentary (Film Studies), Russian Film
- by Frederick H White
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- Film Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, Russian Film, Memoir and Autobiography
- by Walid M Rihane
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- Russian Studies, Communication, Art History, Media Studies

The article about main lines of russian feature film history: from 1898 to modern times. The history of Russian cinema goes back more than a century, it knew the stages of rise and fall, ideological repression and complete creative freedom. This controversial history was studied by
both Russian and foreign scientists. Of course, Soviet and Western scientists studied Soviet cinema from different ideological positions. Soviet filmmakers were generally active in supporting socialist
realism in cinema, while Western scholars, on the contrary, rejected this method and paid great attention to the Soviet film avant-garde of the 1920s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the situation changed: russian and foreign film historians began to study cinema in a similar
methodological manner, focusing on both ideological and socio-cultural aspects of the cinematographic process.
Keywords: history, film, movie, cinema, USSR, Russia, film historians, film studies.

- by Alexander Fedorov
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- Russian Studies, Film Studies, Film Analysis, Film History
- by Russell Campbell
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- Film Studies, Russian Film

With the filmmaker’s untimely death in 2013, scholars will now begin to unpack exactly what Aleksei Balabanov achieved with his “cinema about cinema.” Watching Balabanov’s films as a singular postmodern text is important in understanding the entire trajectory of this cinematic narrative. In the films of Balabanov his frequent reflexivity goes beyond a critical consciousness of the lack of ultimate truths and, arguably, is more than ironic self-commentary. These intermedial self-references had become an anticipated characteristic of Balabanov’s films. In fact, Balabanov seemed to be acutely aware of the binary opposition between the sacred and the profane – especially in his later films. Over the course of more than a dozen feature films, Balabanov articulated a position that the technology of modernity refracted a neo-reality, one which further alienated people from the sacred. Russia’s degeneration was rooted in the materialist and political propaganda of the profane. The harmful messages transported by the television and the cinema enhanced the moral vacuity and bestiality of a Godless society – one which was vulnerable to the promises of miracle, mystery and authority by Russian authoritarianism. Balabanov’s “cinema about cinema” was a constant reminder that the simulacra of Russian reality was, in fact, a mediated visual text for interpretation; providing a social and political critique of post-Soviet society.

- by Frederick H White
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- Russian Studies, Film Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, Russian Film
- by John MacKay
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- Avant-Garde Cinema, Soviet History, Marxism, Rhythm

This paper investigates the relationship between Ernest Becker's pulitzer prize winning work "The Denial of Death" and the film "Nostalghia" by Andrei Tarkovsky. It establishes "Nostalghia" as an ostensibly spiritual work by the great... more

- by James Annoreno
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- Film Theory, Film History, Russian Film, Film and History

Fyodor Bondarchuk's 2013 Stalingrad was both the Russian Federation's first IMAX production and its highest grossing domestic blockbuster. And Stalingrad was also steeped in controversy-particularly over its Nazi character Peter Kahn, who was labeled by some as "an enemy with a face" and by others as a glorification of Nazism. Though similar depictions of Nazis developed in Hollywood and other Western cinema nearly 50 years ago and represent shifting understandings of the Second World War, a recent surge in literature on present-day representations of Nazism in world media has largely overlooked the former Soviet Union. The thesis attempts to fill this gap by attempting to explain why the representation of the Nazi figure in Stalingrad generated the divided discourse it did by conducting a thematic analysis of a corpus of film reviews published online between September and November 2013. In doing so, this thesis identifies a "memory war," in which three major meta-themes relied upon by Russian film critics in discussing Stalingrad's Nazi are revealed. These meta-themes suggest certain societal anxieties with the present-day narrative and memory of the Great Patriotic War, including worry over foreign interference in Russia's national mythology and whether or not the memory of the war can be successfully transferred to and instilled in the youngest generation.

- by Academic Studies Press
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- Russian Studies, Russian Literature, Cold War, Science Fiction

Film International 16.4 (2018): 85-88. Print.

- by Tom Ue, FRHistS
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- Russian Studies, Film Studies, Russian, Film Analysis
- by Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya
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- Influence, Russian Film, Tarkovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky
- by Russell Campbell
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- Film Studies, Politics and Film, Russian Film

Dziga Vertov is a filmmaker of a rare breed. Unlike Hollywood’s classic silent film, that romanticizes American history and values, Vertov looks forward and promotes a new, industrial era. Unlike German expressionism, dedicating camerawork to conveying emotion, he conveys motion and speed. Even unlike his Russian contemporaries perfecting montage to carry fiction narrative, Vertov’s kino-eye does not try to fit into a film genre but creates its own. Man with a Movie Camera embodies Vertov’s visions of pure enchantment with the invention of film, while serving to the ideals of the social revolution.

- by Denisa Kraus
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- Film Studies, Film Theory, Propaganda, Documentary (Film Studies)
- by Åsne Høgetveit
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- Spatial Analysis, History of Space Travel, Aviation, Russian Film
- by Jihoon Kim
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- Film Studies, Film Theory, Russian Film
- by Annie Yi
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- Film Studies, Soviet History, Second World War, Russian Film

История моего знакомства с Войцехом Кайтохом незамысловата. Началось всё с того, что Константину Душенко привезли из Кракова книгу: Wojciech Kajtoch. Bracia Strugaccy: (Zarys twórczości). -Kraków: Universitas, 1993. Константин прислал мне... more

- by Wojciech Kajtoch
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- Russian Studies, Russian Literature, Symbolism, Science Fiction
- by Frederick H White
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- Film Studies, Film Adaptation, Post-Soviet Studies, Russian Film

This article deals with the dance-related layer of Eisenstein’s Gesamtkunstwerkfilm, Ivan the Terrible (Part 1, 1944; Part 2, 1946). Narrative and visual borrowings from the famous ballet Swan Lake, whose leading star Galina Ulanova was to play Anastasia in Ivan the Terrible, are examined in the first part of this essay. Another part discusses seemingly wild, yet meaningful and thoroughly staged steps of the oprichniki’s dance in Part 2 as opposed to the majestic choreography of the wedding feast shown at the film’s beginning. As argued in the final part of the article, Eisenstein chose to use choreography as a specific type of narrative, which could reveal the hidden message that the pre-censored scenario was not supposed or allowed to put into words.

- by Daria Khitrova
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- Dance and Politics, Russian Film, Dance, Classical Ballet

The aim of the article is the interpretation of two films directed by Aleksei Balabanov, i.e. Cargo 200 and Stoker and the novel Boys in Zinc written by Svetlana Alexievich, from the point of view of representations of Soviet-Afghan war (1979–1989), contained in them. The methodological basis of the analysis constitutes the concept of the allegorical moment, which was worked out by Adam Lowenstein in his book Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film. It is assumed that one of the most important rules governing the selected works of art is providing the viewer with the shocking image to replace and imitate the shock of the traumatic boundary experience. In this context the prose of the Nobel prize winner serves as a kind of voice-over, the documentary allowing us tounderstand and emphasize the meaning of Balabanov’s posttraumatic films.

- by Beata Waligorska-Olejniczak
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- Russian Studies, Russian Literature, Film Studies, Literature
- by Frederick H White
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- Russian Studies, Russian Film, Post-Soviet Literature and Film, Russian Cinema

U radu se ukazuje na značajan doprinos ruskih emigranata razvoju filma na prostorima bivše Jugoslavije, sa naglaskom na Srbiju i Beograd. Dela filmskih autora ruskog porekla kontekstualizuju se unutar istorije srpskog i jugoslovenskog... more

- by Vladimir Kolaric
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- Russian Studies, Film Theory, Film History, Russian Film
- by Ivan Eubanks
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- Russian Studies, Russian Film, Russian Cinema, Alexander Sokurov

During his lifetime, Sergei Eisenstein was both officially lionized and officially condemned in the Soviet Union, occasionally at the same time. The government repeatedly applied to him a peculiar formula by which the latest film of this 'Honored Artist' was declared a 'grave error'. Paradoxically, these opposite poles of Eisenstein's status coincided in the final year of his life, after Stalin rejected Part II of Ivan the Terrible. To quote Oksana Bulgakowa, in this period, 'Eisenstein found himself in an odd situation. His film was banned, but his person enjoyed highest favor. ' 1 Eisenstein's ambiguous reputation as both iconic and suspect persisted into the post-Stalin era, albeit now undergoing a dramatic reconfiguration. As a canonized Soviet classic, he became an object of official reverence (a Moscow street was named after him in 1968) and a subject of compulsory study in film schools. At the same time, as Naum Kleiman has recently pointed out, some prominent members of the emerging 'Thaw' generation of Soviet filmmakers were put off by what was perceived as Eisenstein's place of honour in official Soviet culture. 2 These younger artists had been raised on Eisenstein's films and readily acknowledged their artistic power, but resented their explicit political messages. In the Thaw period, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) produced an important early case of the moral and political rejection of Eisenstein, coupled with aesthetic indebtedness to him. Solzhenitsyn's groundbreaking prison camp novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) included two memorable scenes in which prisoners debate Eisenstein's work: the novella's eponymous protagonist, a peasant arrested during his wartime military service, overhears two conversations about Eisenstein, each initiated by a youngish Muscovite named Tsezar, an unsympathetically depicted cosmopolitan aesthete, filmmaker and Eisenstein enthusiast. Tsezar's interlocutors, meanwhile, are critical of 6

- by Evgenii Bershtein
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- Gender in Film, Russian Film, The Russian Silver Age, Queer/Gay film
- by Frederick H White
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- Russian Studies, Film Studies, Russian Film, Post-Soviet Literature and Film

К ино Александра Сокурова, изощренное, медитативное и завораживающее, отличается тематической широтой. Но один визуальный мотив повторяется в нем регулярно и составляет в ряде фильмов этого мастера тематический стержень. Это мотив атлетического мужского тела -фиксация на нем заметна уже в самых ранних работах Сокурова, но в начале прошлого десятилетия она стала предметом критических споров, особенно разгоревшихся после выхода в 2003 году ленты «Отец и сын». Оценки этой картины сосредоточились на ее эротической тональности: критик Екатерина Барабаш даже обвинила Сокурова в производстве «мягкого порно» гомосексуального толка и в женоненавистничестве 1 . Иностранные киножурналисты были заинтригованы смелой (и, как им тоже казалось, гомоэротической) образностью российского режиссера -хотя на Западе такого рода эротика давно и прочно вошла в мейнстрим, в том числе и коммерческий. На суждения критиков Сокуров ответил гневом: после премьеры фильма в Каннах он дал рассерженную прессконференцию, в ходе которой категорически отверг гомоэротические интерпретации фильма («Не понимаю, откуда взялось такое пошлое понимание!») и обвинил киножурналистов в отсутствии всякого толка («Что за помойка у вас в головах!»), а Запад -в развращенности поп-культурой, из-за которой «мы перестаем понимать ли-те-ра-ту-ру!» 2 . Согласно Сокурову, малокультурные и пошлые критики не смогли уловить простейший литературный прием, развернутый в фильме -раздвоение героя и появление его «двойника», -без понимания чего невозможно постичь «целомудренный» смысл ленты.

- by Evgenii Bershtein
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- Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Film Studies, Film Analysis

Diseño de cubierta: Red ediciones S.L ISBN rústica: 978-84-9007-101-4.

- by Beth Holmgren
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- American Studies, Russian Literature, Popular Music Studies, Film Studies
- by Marijeta Bozovic
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- Film Studies, Film Theory, Film Analysis, Russian Film