Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema最新文献

{"title":"Russian TV series in the era of transition: genres, technologies, identities","authors":"E. Sattarova","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2167557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2167557","url":null,"abstract":"analyse well-known films from unexpected perspectives. However, this analysis is sometimes incomplete. For example, in her consideration of Klushantsev’s Planet of Storms (1962), she concentrates on the plot related to the film’s female character, while other aspects of the film concerning the problems of alternative history, the interaction between Russian and American cosmonauts, and the construction of special effects are characterised rather sparingly. Klushantsev’s films deserve (as Majsova herself notes) much more attention, not only due to his unique cinematic talent but also because they raise some interesting questions about the development of the sci-fi genre in the context of the formation of the Soviet film industry and its interaction with the development of cosmonautics. Concentrating on the analysis of the social content of space films plots seems to be a legitimate methodological choice of the author, but it would be important to at least outline for the reader other ways of studying sci-fi cinema, such as the analysis of special effects or the sound component of films. It is in Majsova’s book that many segments of Soviet film fiction are presented more or less full for the first time. However, it is clear that the work of directors such as Protazanov and Tarkovsky has repeatedly been the subject of attention by film scholars. And if in the description of Aelita the author refers extensively to Ian Christie and Andrew Horton, the author’s attitude to the vast tradition of studying the fantastic imagination in the films of Tarkovsky remains unсlear. Majsova’s investigation of the constructions of subjectivity in Soviet sci-fi cinema, the spaces and agents depicted in it, deepens our understanding of the canon of the genre, shows the tensions and shifts within it and demonstrates how the utopian impulse is embodied in the aesthetic of each of the analysed works. The typology of utopian imagination, outlined in the conclusion of Majsova’s book, is the logical conclusion of this analysis of the Soviet sci-fi film, showing once again that it is connected to the poststructuralist interpretation of subjectivity, which was shaped in the space of Soviet cinematic astroculture and stitched into the sci-fi films. However, the book’s conclusion, entitled ‘Replay, rewatch, remember’ also brings another perspective, assuming a shift from astroculture to film culture, from the diversity of utopias to multiple viewers, from an analysis of genre structures to an examination of the film practices associated with sci-fi archives and space age memory. It could be said that by drawing a map of the Soviet film fantasy country for us, Majsova has invited us to a more careful and scrupulous acquaintance with its attractions.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"55 - 57"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47821827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The waning of the young sincere hero in Averbakh and Maslennikov’s The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin","authors":"I. Souch, V. Mikhailin, G. Belyaeva","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2163960","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2163960","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article discusses the 1967 film The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin, directed by Il’ia Averbakh and Igor’ Maslennikov. The film belongs to the Thaw period of Soviet filmmaking, defined by cineastes’ pledge to sincerity. This idea aligned with the cultural transformations launched by the Khrushchev administration at the end of the 1950s, which encompassed radical changes in the attitudes and behaviour of the Soviet youth. Sensitive to the current political climate, Soviet filmmakers populated their narratives with the new, honest and self-reflective young heroes. Our detailed analysis of The Private Life of Kuziaev Valentin demonstrates how it critically interrogates and destabilises the popular sincerity discourse of the time. Engaging in a complex dialogue with Marlen Khutsiev’s iconic 1962 production Ilyich’s Gate, the film also foreshadows the imminent appearance, on the Soviet screen, of a radically different character. In the 1970s, the introspective flaneurs of the Thaw are slowly replaced by their cynical and shallow, two-dimensional copies. Remarkably, this evolution of the contemporary protagonist coincided with similar tendencies in French and British cinema.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"6 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42223662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Soviet science fiction cinema and the space age: memorable futures","authors":"B. Stepanov","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2167554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2167554","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"54 - 55"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48948892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The future is (still) bleak: the lives of youth on Russia’s margins in Vasilii Pichul’s Little Vera and Nataliia Meshchaninova’s The Hope Factory","authors":"Emily Schuckman Matthews","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2163965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2163965","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Through a comparative analysis of the films Little Vera by Vasilii Pichul (1988) and The Hope Factory by Nataliia Meshchaninova (2014), the article examines the representation of youth living at the margins of Soviet/Russian society economically, socially and geographically. These films are connected not only by their narrative focus on young people coming of age amid political change, but by their utilisation of cinematic and narrative styles associated with the chernukha genre that emerged in late 1980s and early 1990s in Soviet cinema. Both films offer intimate and naturalistic portrayals of Soviet/Russian youth to explore themes including substance abuse, sex, trauma and young people’s quest to escape the confines of their current lives and create a future for themselves in their ‘new’ Russia.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"37 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49587875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Youth as a ‘priority theme’: Socio-political impetus and the evolution of films for youth in Russia and the Soviet Union","authors":"Laura Todd","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2163963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2163963","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the evolution of ‘films for children and youth’ from the early 1970s to 2021. The genre-category was one of the most significant in the Soviet Union, serving a political, social and artistic function as a mediator of Soviet values and norms for the youngest generation. For most of its history, critical literature has focused on the films ‘for children’ rather than youth – a more fluid category. Since the 1970s, the intrinsic tension within the genre-category led to a crisis within, with film workers and other interested parties showing concern that teenagers were not sufficiently represented on film. This tension was fed by wider societal concerns about the growing gap between the younger and older generations in the Stagnation period. Whilst youth became a key discussion point during Perestroika, the concern over how to target and guide youth audiences had started earlier. The communication gap between old and young remained unresolved through to the post-Soviet period, when the arrival of ‘priority themes’ for national film funding suggests a continued effort to differentiate between children and youth in order to shape consciousness. However, this process also reveals the lingering presence of Soviet film norms in the post-Soviet period.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"21 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45458918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Screening Russian youth: An introduction","authors":"Jenny Kaminer","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2163959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2163959","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This introduction outlines the scope of the cluster presented in this issue (17.1) of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema on the representation of youth on late-Soviet and Russian screens. It connects the arguments made in the three contributions by Irina Souch, Vadim Mikhailin, and Galina Belyaeva; by Laura Todd; and by Emily Schuckman Matthews, concerning the emergence on screen of the young hero from the 1960s as a representative of sincerity, who contrasts with the older generation; the growing non-conformism and aggression of the younger generation in the late 1970s and 1980s; and the erupting violence in late-Soviet and post-Soviet cinema.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"2 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43629752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From children’s cinema to documentalist aesthetics: Antarctica, Faraway Country by Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky","authors":"M. Kazyuchits, Nina Sputnitskaia","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2022.2131211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2022.2131211","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article forms the introduction to the publication of the script Antarctica, faraway country. The script was written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei (Mikhalkov)-Konchalovsky during their student days and completed in the early 1960s; however, the script was never realised and belongs to the category of ‘unrealised scripts’. The article traces the origins of the idea for the script and places them in the context of Soviet cinema of the Thaw, before investigating the transformation that the script underwent in the 1960s, when both filmmakers and scriptwriters had already established their reputation with their debut films. These changes are highlighted through an analysis of a key scene, before the article demonstrates in detail how the changes to the script versions of 1960 and 1966 reflect a shift in Tarkovsky’s vision of man in the universe, and specifically his relation to nature, whilst pointing towards similar concerns in Tarkovsky’s later films.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"16 1","pages":"200 - 256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46016665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Esfir Shub: pioneer of documentary filmmaking","authors":"Anne Eakin Moss","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2022.2115048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2022.2115048","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"16 1","pages":"260 - 261"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45142572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial","authors":"B. Beumers","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2022.2131214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2022.2131214","url":null,"abstract":"The third issue of Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema for 2022 presents three articles and a discovery. Let us turn to the contributions: first, we have an article by Olga Davydenko, who was one of the winners of the 2021 competition of best student articles at St Petersburg State University for Film and Television, which – in the hibernation period of the pandemic, we organised for the second time with the wonderful Polina Stepanova, because we wanted our students to have a little bit of a challenge in these dull days of lockdowns. The article offers a fine investigation of the acting ‘mask’ of the actor Igor’ Il’inski, whose work is here explored in the films of the silent era. Second, there is an article on the scenarios of Aleksandr Rzheshevskii, who scripted, among other films, Sergei Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow. Sergei Ogudev brilliantly analyses Rzheshevskii’s scripts within the context of narrative theories. The third article in this issue comes with a discovery, of Andrei Tarkovsky’s and Andrei Konchalovsky’s script for their unrealised project Antarctica, Faraway Country, finalised in 1966. Parts of an earlier version of the script (from the late 1950s) are known, but the scholars Nina Sputnitskaia and Maksim Kazyutchis have accomplished something else here, namely the reconstruction of the working process from the first version to the final script, which is published as an appendix to their article. In their discussion, they draw out the origins in this script of later characteristic features of Tarkovsky’s oeuvre. As usual, we have a selection of book reviews, prepared and presented by Stephen M. Norris, to whom I express my gratitude. And – as always, Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema encourages submissions on any aspect of pre-Revolutionary, Soviet-era and post-Soviet cinema and visual culture, including the former Soviet territories. We operate a system of double-blind peer-review; submissions should be original (i.e. previously unpublished, including publications in another language) and will be considered at any time throughout the year. They should be sent to the editor at birgit.beumers@gmail.com.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"16 1","pages":"163 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45825537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The film script as oral narrative of personal experience in Aleksandr Rzheshevskii’s oeuvre","authors":"Sergei Ogudov","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2022.2115203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2022.2115203","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the study of the film scripts by Aleksandr G. Rzheshevskii (1903–1967). In contrast to the concept of the ‘emotional scenario’, which emphasises the textual structure, this article suggests a reading of his scripts in connection with the problems of an oral narrative of personal experience. Such an approach allows us to consider important creative principles for Rzheshevskii’s work, in particular the link between the film script with biographical experience and orality, both at the level of composition and in the course of the presentation of the text. As compositional markers of oral speech, the article analyses elements of poetic syntax, indefinite pronouns, onomatopoeias, blasphemy and abusive terms, which are the result of storytelling about the events of the Civil War and its consequences.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"16 1","pages":"183 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41970755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}