Soviet Cinema Research Articles

Concepts of reproductive behaviour and motherhood in Soviet cinema of the 1920–1930s

The article examines representations of motherhood and reproductive behaviour in Soviet cinema from Revolution 1917 to the mid-1930s (films “Children are the Flowers of Life”, “The Road to Happiness”, “Katka's Reinette Apples”, “Bed and Sofa”, etc.) through the study of the reproductive choice mechanism, demonstration of pregnancy, childbirth and child care. Conclusions are drawn about the presence of several main conceptual frameworks, such as happy Soviet motherhood as opposed to pre-revolutionary motherhood; the unreliability of the parental function of the biological father, but the support of the collective and the acquisition of a new partner, which means the creation of a two-parents family; transition from the demonstration of medical instruments and the process of childbirth to the withdrawal of this segment; etc.

The Eroticism of the Face: Covers of Film Periodicals Ekrano Naujienos and Kinas (1955–1986)

Summary Soviet cinema magazines covers played a crucial role in shaping the cinematic star system of the Soviet Union, yet their significance has been largely overlooked in academic discussions. This article examines the covers of two periodicals, Ekrano naujienos (News of the Screen) and Kinas (Cinema), published in Soviet Lithuania from 1955 to 1986, focusing specifically on covers featuring a single face. The analysis situates these covers within the broader context of the close-up of the face, which held a prominent position in Soviet cinema culture. Additionally, the article explores the unique context of eroticism associated with the face in Soviet cinema criticism. Quantitative analysis reveals that cover images featuring women’s faces would eventually emerge as the predominant image type on the covers of both Ekrano naujienos and Kinas. By employing qualitative analysis, which divides images into descriptive and narrative categories, the aesthetic evolution of these covers is investigated. In the first half of the period from 1955 to 1972, narrative images were more prevalent. However, in the second half of that time, descriptive photographs depicting the faces of actresses, particularly those that were eroticized, became more prevalent. On the contrary, cover pages followed a standardized logic and avoided visually explicit images during the Stagnation period. The establishment of a cinema star system in Soviet Lithuania and the tightening of the Soviet cinema system are factors that contributed to these aesthetic shifts.

Fighting Media Delinquency with Soviet Sound: Nikolai Ekk’s The Road to Life (1931) in Japan at a Time of Crisis

This paper uses a transmedial lens to examine Japan’s engagement with Soviet film, focusing on the 1933 adaptation of Nikolai Ekk’s The Road to Life (Putevka v zhizn’, 1931) for the Japanese pictorial medium of kamishibai. Challenging an unspoken consensus that it was The Road to Life’s status as ‘the first’ Soviet talkie that accounts for its tremendous success and continuing influence, it was in fact the film’s ‘conversion’ narrative that explains equally, if not more so, its popularity and impact. Although a product of a markedly different cultural context, The Road to Life and its depiction of reformed Soviet teenagers appealed to the Japanese state, the Japanese film industry, and to kamishibai creators alike, as each in their own way strove to distance themselves from an associative link with ‘juvenile delinquency,’ as well as from representatives of the Japanese Left who were increasingly persecuted by the state. As such, the film’s conversion narrative functions as a powerful metaphor for the political transformations that both Japan and its visual media underwent in the early 1930s.

Special joint issue of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema and Culture of Ukraine (Kul’tura Ukrainy)

Special joint issue of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema and Culture of Ukraine (Kul’tura Ukrainy)

Creative use of objects as signs in cinema: an analysis of Sergei Parajanov’s Hakob Hovnatanyan

The paper presents an analysis of Sergei Parajanov’s short film, Hakob Hovnatanyan (1967), and its significance as an example of poetic cinema within Soviet cinematography. Not only feature-length films of Parajanov, but also his short films hold an important place among his œuvre, as a multi-modal and multi-channel visualization of the past. Hakob Hovnatanyan is a prime example of poetic cinema in Soviet cinematography. A pioneer in this discourse in the Soviet Union was Andrei Tarkovsky with his film Andrei Rublev (1966). Examples of this discourse include the Parajanov’s films The Color of Pomegranates (orig. Nṙan gowynë, 1969), Arabesque on a Theme of Pirosmani (orig. Arabeskebi Pirosmanis temaze, 1985), and Etudes on Vrubel (orig. Etyudy on Vrubel, 1989), which was directed by Leonid Osyka (scriptwriter Parajanov). The paper explores Hakob Hovnatanyan as a converter of cultural memory and multimodal vehicle for the construction of the spirit of the city. While in the framework of the short film the city is presented in the open air, in the middle the interior, the everyday life, the hum of language, and the language of clothes and necklaces of Old Tbilisi, Georgia, are presented. The interior and spirit are presented not only on the visual level of paintings, carpets, and furniture (a dresser with a metronome) but also through auditory elements: sound, language, music, etc. Thus, through a multimodal visualization of the past Parajanov presents a new language of cinema (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (orig. Tini zabutykh predkiv, 1965), The Color of Pomegranates, The Legend of Suram Fortress (orig. Ambavi suramis tsikhisa, 1985), Ashik Kerib (orig. Ashik’-keribi, 1988, first director Dodo Abashidze)).

A linguist among cineastes: Roman Jakobson on the moving image

ABSTRACT The article presents a critical review of the texts on cinema and the moving image written by Roman Jakobson between 1921 and 1980, gathered under the following headings: sound film; Soviet cinema; semiotic approach; metonymy/metaphor; synchrony/diachrony; film criticism and film comparisons. It is concluded that for Jakobson the cinema, as a semiotic system, establishes a link between linguistics and poetics.

­Soviet ‘Easterns/Osterns’ of the 1920s: Adventure Films on the Caucasian Frontier of Russia

The article elucidates the issue of representation in Soviet cinema of historical events that transpired during the formation of the Caucasian frontier and the interactions that emerged between the indigenous population and the tsarist troops. The term “Eastern” is analogous to the term “Western” which refers to films about the exploration of the Wild West. This is a useful way of conceptualizing Soviet silent films created on Caucasian material from the 19th–early 20th centuries. This article aims to examine feature films from the 1920s that depict Russia’s advance into the Caucasus. It seeks to identify similarities and differences between these films and the first Soviet “Easterns/Osterns” and “Westerns,” as well as to analyze the influence of ideological attitudes in historical science on the interpretation and depiction of events that took place on the Caucasian frontier. The visual sources utilized in this study include the silent films ‘Abrek Zaur’ (1926), ‘The Law of the Mountains’ (1927), and ‘Zelimkhan’ (1929). Additionally, published materials from the 1920s, including periodicals such as newspapers and magazines, were consulted. The study yielded insights into the stylistic similarities between classic Westerns and the first Soviet Easterns, including the portrayal of protagonists, the use of action and stunts, and the incorporation of jumps. The content of the films is correlated with real historical events, but they reflect the Bolshevik paradigm of history in the study of ethnosocial conflicts in the Caucasus. In films about highlanders, masculine culture is a dominant feature due to gender attitudes and the national cultural identity of the peoples of the Caucasus. Films about mountaineers were instrumental in shaping perceptions of the Caucasus during the early decades of the twentieth century. They illustrate the attributes of traditional culture, daily life, customs of mountain village inhabitants, the characteristics of the landscape, and architectural features. In general, films of an adventurous nature created on Caucasian material are of interest to those with an affinity for classic cinema, particularly the earliest Soviet Eastern films, as well as to researchers seeking to gain insight into significant historical and cultural information. This article is intended for those engaged in the study of the history of Soviet cinema.

Mykola Shpykovskyi and the visual style of late VUFKU films

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on an editing strategy repeatedly found in Mykola Shpykovskyi’s films The Self-Seeker (Shkurnyk, 1929) and Bread (Khlib, 1929) that relies on limited camera set-ups and axial cutting. The aim of this analysis is to situate these films and Shpykovskyi in relationship to the stylistic influence of late silent-era films both within the Soviet Union and across Western Europe – a consideration of how Soviet montage aesthetics were appropriated in Soviet films overall. The intention is to begin making a case for how late silent Ukrainian cinema can be considered a national cinema – distinctive not only in terms of its content and themes but also by virtue of its stylistic norms.

ALLUSIVE HEADLINES IN THE MEDIA: AXIOLOGICAL ASPECT

The article is devoted to the analysis of newspaper headlines based on allusion. Using the material of texts published in 2023 in the newspapers Zavtra and Kommersant, which are diff erent in terms of ideological ori-entation and stylistics, the authors examine the axiological signifi cance of such factors as the choice of the source of allusion, the absence or presence of transformation, and the leading principle of playing with the original text. Both similarities and diff erences in the creation of allusive headlines are revealed. Both publications actively seek source material from phraseology, Russian classical literature and Soviet cinema, which is explained by the priority of marketing considerations: a headline that refers to an easily recognisable text is the most attractive. In the Zavtra newspaper, the sources of allusive headlines can be modern rude and ironic statements typical of colloquial speech and works of Russian classical literature that are well known to the mass addressee. In this case, the original form of the source text is either unchanged or minimally transformed, while retaining the original evaluative connota-tions. Recognition and comprehension of such allusive titles does not require additional cognitive eff orts from the addressee, which allows us to speak about the setting to attract the attention of the widest possible addressee. The specifi cs of Kommersant’s headlines lie in the more active use of precedent statements. The sources of allusions are not only phraseological phrases and works of Russian classical literature, but also precedent texts associated with Soviet realities and texts of fi ction that are not widely known. The precedent texts, regardless of their nature, are subjected to a “reducing” transformation through language play. The attractiveness of such titles is determined by the level of background knowledge of the addressee, who needs not only to identify the source text and understand the allusion in the title text, but also to correlate the axiological characteristics of the precedent and allusive texts. The authors of the article note that titling with the use of evaluative allusion is one of the regularly used methods of adjusting the media text to the target audience.

«There Is No Flame, Only Smoke Lingers»: the Image of a Rock Musician in Modern Russian Cinema

The article analyzes the image of a rock musician in modern Russian cinema. Having developed a cult status in the mid-80s - early 90s, this kind of character reappeared on the screens in the first decade of the 21st century. One after another, the sequels to the Perestroika hits «2-Assa-2» by S. Solovyov and «The Needle Remix» by R. Nugmanov are released, a number of other notable films featuring this image are produced, but they fail to repeat the success of their predecessors. The author analyzes the cultural codes behind the image of a rock musician in Russian cinema, traces its changes and concludes that the cult hero of the Perestroika and the early nineties nowadays, «rehabilitated» by the silver screen and «polished» by the elapsed time, has acquired a new resonance. If initially a rock musician in Soviet cinema was an opinion maker and an inspiring leader, in modern Russian cinema he has become a sign of spiritual exhaustion and lack of sense-making guidelines typical of the 2000s.

The Motherland and the Fight with Fascism: War Cult and War Film under Brezhnev (1965–82)

AbstractThis article, based on extensive archival documentation, newspapers, and periodicals, examines the impact upon the Soviet film industry of shifts in top‐level policy relating to representation of the war. It contends that Leonid Brezhnev’s May 8, 1965, speech on the eve of Victory Day propounded an inclusive vision of the war (later sections of the speech comprise an exhaustive inventory of different representatives of military and civilian society who had been responsible for victory). Yet, in lending encouragement to participants of all kinds to consider their experience valid, the speech opened up a discursive space in which validity might be contested. Further, the emphasis in the film industry upon innovation and the need to avoid predictability ran directly against the requirement that commemoration of the war should fit highly ritualized and easily recognizable patterns. The article traces the results of these overall contradictions in the arguments about overall policy on the war film between representatives of the High Command, film managers at Goskino, cinema’s central bureaucracy, and filmmakers themselves, and the controversies around individual films, including Iurii Ozerov’s Liberation (1968–72), Andrei Smirnov’s The Belorussian Station (1970), Aleksei German’s Operation “New Year” (1971, released as Checkpoint, 1985), and Larisa Shepit'ko’s Ascent (1977).

The Myth of Stalin and the Death of Hitler: André Bazin and The Fall of Berlin’s Transnational Travels

This essay explores aspects of the transnational and transhistorical impact of The Fall of Berlin (Padenie Berlina, Mikheil Chiaureli, 1949). Although the film is late Stalinist propaganda, and an outstanding manifestation of the Stalin personality cult, it cannot be reduced to those descriptors. It has had an ongoing impact upon viewers within different cultural contexts who do not necessarily subscribe to its politics. André Bazin’s seminal, frequently translated and reprinted essay ‘The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema’ (‘Le cinéma soviétique et le mythe de Staline’, 1950), is the most famous and frequently quoted piece of writing on Stalin personality cult films, but it is not the final word on them. It needs to be understood within the specific context of French film culture during the immediate postwar period. This essay therefore highlights the cultural specificity of ‘The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema’ by contrasting the debates within which Bazin’s essay was enmeshed with the equally culturally specific British reception of The Fall of Berlin in the early 1950s, exemplified by leading film critics and historians such as Dilys Powell, Fred Madjalany and Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Aesthetic Grounds and Practice of Screen Adaptations of Theatrical Productions in the Light of Film and Television Language in the 1970s

The aesthetic grounds and methods of screen adaptation of theatrical performances in the context of film and television art in the USSR in the 1970s are investigated in the article as well as the influence of film and television technologies on the theatrical genre, the peculiarities of the adaptation of stage performances to the cinematographic and television environment. Attention is also paid to the revealing the peculiarities of cinematographic art as a synthetic phenomenon and its interaction with the theatrical tradition. These issues are considered in the context of the cultural and political realities of the USSR of that period, highlighting the relationship between aesthetic searches and ideological attitudes of the era. In general, a deep and systematic understanding of the process of film adaptation of theatrical performances within the framework of Soviet cinema and television art of the 1970s is submitted in the article. Since the films of this period become a time of development of existential problems of human life. The typical life of a Soviet person recedes into the background, instead, the basis of the plot becomes the search for peace of the soul, its urges for freedom, which usually unfolds against the background of something insignificant. Unlike the adaptations of literary works, when ”current ideological content” is imposed on classical original sources, adaptations of the best plays of leading Ukrainian theaters have offered perfect art, introduced a wide audience to the achievements of stage masters. But the screen adaptation of the performance is a fixation of one staging, which, of course, is shown unchanged on movie screens. The play cannot remain as it is conceived from the very beginning, and therefore gradually it has started to transform itself according to the requirements of television. However, such transformations are not always successful either. This is the beginning of the creation of a kind of the average genre between cinema and theater, which wished for better, because the aesthetic content of such a specific genre has remained opened.

CINEMA ART AT THE SERVICE OF UNDERSTANDING AND TRANSLATION DIDACTICS

The article is a review of the textbook written by Natalia V. Kabyak for students studying Russian as a foreign language. It is based on the material of Soviet films from different chronological periods and encompasses vast strata of vocabulary, including colloquialisms, in terms of comprehension and translation. Cinema materials consist mainly of comedies which are attractive and easy for reception. The textbook disposes important cognitive potential which serves a purpose of students’ communicative competence progress and adaptation in the Russian linguistic and cultural environment.

Ukraine in Soviet Narratives about the October Revolution: A Case Study of Ihor Savchenko’s Film Ballad About Cossack Holota (1937)

Ukraine’s social, political, and cultural history has become a controversial issue since the 1990s. Dominant until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the discourse about the Soviet brotherly nations has since been contested by depictions of Ukraine as politically and ideologically divided over the course of its 20th-century history. Russia-Ukraine war that began with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 Feb 2022 has had a dramatic impact on the process of replacing the formerly standard version of Ukraine’s past with new interpretations. At the same time, Russia’s war on Ukraine has also demonstrated that Soviet-era collective memory about the key events in Soviet history has outlived the Soviet state and has been mobilized for political use. When in pain of heart a Ukrainian politician says that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cancelled a shared past of Ukraine and Russia, he refers to a familiar discourse about these nations’ familial ties (Tkach). With this discourse now shattered, the question of particular salience is: How was the idea of brotherhood between Ukraine and other Soviet nations expressed and sustained? How did it evolve? In light of Russia-Ukraine war, the stories that were building blocks of the Soviet foundational narrative about Ukraine and Russia as fraternal nations are worth revisiting. An analysis of such stories reveals the mechanism of making Ukraine’s part an integral part of Soviet culture. In this paper, I discuss the issue of the evolution of the Soviet discourse about ‘eternal friendship of Ukrainian and Russian peoples’ in the example of Igor Savchenko’s film Ballad About Cossack Holota ( Duma pro kozaka Golotu, 1937), released by the Gorkii Film Studio as part of the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Igor Savchenko (Ihor Savchenko in 24 | WEEReview 13 | 2024 Ukraine in Soviet Narratives about the October Revolution Ukrainian) was a Ukrainian Soviet film director who made films both in Russian and Ukrainian film studios; his work played an important role in promoting the idea of familial ties between Ukraine and Russia. Ballad About Cossak Holota is based on Arkadii Gaidar’s novella for children R.V.S. (1925) that is set during the Civil War in Ukraine, following the October Revolution. Savchenko’s film is especially interesting in how he reworks Gaidar’s story; he depicts events of the Civil War in the context of Ukraine’s 17th-18th-century history, drawing on Ukrainian folklore. Cossack Holota, a character from Ukrainian folklore, becomes a symbol of the revolutionary liberation of Ukraine, a promise of a just social and political order. Drawing on memory studies, post-colonial theory, and theory of deconstruction, I discuss the artistic means that Savchenko used in order to integrate Ukraine’s experience of the revolution and the Civil War into the Soviet discourse about the fight for Soviet power. Savchenko constructs Ukraine’s response to the revolution by making use of tropes of a big family, Biblical imagery, elements of folk culture, conventions of the adventure film. The study of Savchenko’s film contributes to our understanding of the debates about Soviet-era and presentday collective memory about the October Revolution and the Civil War in Ukraine and Russia. As the discourse about the biggest Soviet nations’ familial unity is yet another casualty of Russia-Ukraine war, it is important to consider how the idea of brotherhood between Ukraine and other Soviet nations was expressed in Soviet cinema. Such analysis explains why Ukrainian’s common emotional response to the start of the war was that of a feeling of shock and betrayal.

Dramaturgical Film Analysis in Soviet Cinema: ‘My First Teacher (1965)’ and ‘Little Soldier (1972)’ Boy As the Movie Examples

The literary works of Chyngyz Aitmatov, who has an important place in the world literature, were adapted to the cinema for many times. As far as it can be accessed, the observation was that the dramaturgical analysis of these adaptations comparing Russian and Kyrgyz cinemas is missing. In the present research based on this absence, the film “My First Teacher” adapted by Russian director Andrey Konçalovskiy Mihailov and “Soldier Boy” adapted by Kyrgyz director Eldar Urazbayev were analysed dramaturgically in terms of “theme, society, economic and sociological background, discourse plane, opposites, narrative plane of the story, place and character design, perspective and plot, the climax of the movie, stage design (acting, sound, music etc.)” through the questions what kind of dramaturgical structure emerged when two literary works of a Kyrgyz author were adapted to the cinema by a 1) Soviet director and 2) a Kyrgyz director and 3) what dramaturgical similarities these two separate works have. In these films, My First Teacher and Soldier Boy, dramaturgical elements occupy a wide place, just like the majority of Aitmatov’s works adapted to the cinema. And these dramaturgical elements include “Soviet and Kyrgyz music tones, Epic of Manas, cultural items like calpack and qhopuz, plots in accordance with the casuality principle, conflicts between Bolshevism and traditionalism.”

What can the 1985 Soviet film The Most Charming and Attractive tell us about attitudes toward the consumer culture of the late Soviet era?

This essay explores whether the 1985 Soviet film The Most Charming and Attractive, which presents a negative attitude toward late Soviet consumer culture, can tell us anything about real Soviet attitudes toward the consumer culture of the late Soviet era. This essay explores the film’s status as a form of popular entertainment and a propaganda device and argues that this status significantly limits the film’s ability to act as a reliable historical source since ideological and financial pressures would likely have been prioritised over historical accuracy. Ultimately, The Most Charming and Attractive cannot tell us anything useful about real attitudes toward consumer culture in the Soviet Union.

The Brazilian Eisenstein (1961–1981)

ABSTRACT Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, Latin American filmmakers and filmgoers began to interpret and adapt early Soviet avant-garde cinema of the 1920s in an unprecedented fashion, extending its half-life in innovative ways. In this context, Brazil is a generative but seldom explored site. This article traces the Brazilian reception of Soviet cinematic poetics through the shifting approaches to Sergei Eisenstein in the filmography of Leon Hirszman (1937–1987). Eisenstein’s approaches to montage would shape Hirszman from his first student film to the workerist cinema that characterized his late filmography. Like his contemporary Glauber Rocha (1939–1981)—after Hirszman, the Brazilian filmmaker most marked by Eisenstein—Hirszman tranculturated the avant-garde postrevolutionary Soviet film for the truncated revolutionary context of Brazil. Changing and emphasizing different elements in Eisenstein’s understanding of montage, Hirszman consistently depicted it as a capacious opportunity for both capturing and transforming the world: registering justices and multiplying a cinematic off-screen where anti-capitalist solidarities might flourish. His experimental filmmaking praxis also suggests how Eisenstein’s montage method (activating disparate or contradictory contexts through juxtaposition) produces a paradoxical ground for comparison, a poetics of the urgent untimely, rather than either belated or diffusionist accounts of world cinema.

Репрезентація образу Тараса Шевченка в українській радянській кінодокументалістиці 1930–1990 років

Репрезентація образу Тараса Шевченка в українській радянській кінодокументалістиці 1930–1990 років

Architectural and artistic solutions of the OTC during the gentrification of soviet cinemas

In the professional environment of architects, there is concern about the formation of a trend of reconstruction and renovation of buildings and structures in large and major cities in order to develop urban infrastructure. The underestimation of the contribution of Soviet architecture to the cultural heritage of post-Soviet countries and countries of the socialist camp is noted. At the same time, the "new architecture" forms the urban environment under the stereotypes of homologation, which does not correspond to the socio-cultural demand of the glocalization of "digital nomads" seeking to live in eco-digital cities. The obsolescence of the "new architecture" is observed already at the project stage or in five years. In Moscow, the reconstruction program includes 39 Soviet cinemas in the peripheral zone of the city. Public and shopping complexes with underground levels are being built on the site of these cinemas. The article classifies the types of projects of Soviet cinemas and shopping centers, and also forms diagrams for their qualitative comparison. This eventually made it possible to evaluate the architectural and artistic contribution to the Moscow development of both Soviet cinemas and new shopping complexes, the continuity between them and differences in design principles.