‘Watch your films attentively’: Kira Muratova’s unrealised script as a key to her oeuvre

Abstract

This introductory article to the first publication of Kira Muratova’s and Vladimir Zuev’s unrealised film script Watch Your Dreams Attentively (Vnimatel’no smotrite sny, 1969) in this journal issue (pp. 51–96) analyses the key themes of Muratova’s oeuvre and their manifestation in the script. The protagonist is a painter, Anya, who tries to escape from the real world of everyday chores into a dream world, where artistic freedom is possible and where her creative impulse is not inhibited. This chief concern of the script is more developed here than in Muratova’s later films. Similarly, issues of creativity are addressed explicitly in the script, which makes references to the role of art in Soviet society during the stagnation era. Moreover, this early script already suggests some of the chief characteristics of Muratova’s later style, such as the relationship between children and parents, the disconnect between sound and image, the particular role of secondary characters and the tendency to undermine and challenge the spectator by blurring the boundary between the static and the moving image.