Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935

Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935
Author: Denise J. Youngblood
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-09-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0292761112
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The golden age of Soviet cinema, in the years following the Russian Revolution, was a time of both achievement and contradiction, as reflected in the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Kuleshov. Tensions ran high between creative freedom and institutional constraint, radical and reactionary impulses, popular and intellectual cinema, and film as social propaganda and as personal artistic expression. In less than a decade, the creative ferment ended, subjugated by the ideological forces that accompanied the rise of Joseph Stalin and the imposition of the doctrine of Socialist Realism on all the arts. Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 records this lost golden age. Denise Youngblood considers the social, economic, and industrial factors that influenced the work of both lesser-known and celebrated directors. She reviews all major and many minor films of the period, as well as contemporary film criticism from Soviet film journals and trade magazines. Above all, she captures Soviet film in a role it never regained—that of dynamic artform of the proletarian masses.

Imagining America

Imagining America
Author: Alan M. Ball
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2004-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0585482772
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In Imagining America, historian Alan M. Ball explores American influence in two newborn Russian states: the young Soviet Union and the modern Russian Republic. Ball deftly illustrates how in each era Russians have approached the United States with a conflicting mix of ideas—as a land to admire from afar, to shun at all costs, to emulate as quickly as possible, or to surpass on the way to a superior society. Drawing on a wide variety of sources including contemporary journals, newspapers, films, and popular songs, Ball traces the shifting Russian perceptions of American cultural, social, and political life. As he clearly demonstrates, throughout their history Russian imaginations featured a United States that political figures and intellectuals might embrace, exploit, or attack, but could not ignore.

Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema

Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema
Author: Peter Rollberg
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 831
Release: 2008-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0810862689
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Film lovers all over the world are familiar with the masterpieces of Eisenstein and Tarkovsky. These directors' unique achievements were embedded in a powerful process that began under Russia's last tsar and underwent several periods of blossoming: the bourgeois cinema in the 1910s, the revolutionary avant-garde in the 1920s, the Thaw in the 1950s, and the awakening of national cinemas in the 1960s and 1970s. The Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema is the first reference work of its kind in the English language devoted entirely to the cinema of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet period, including both the cinematic highlights and the mainstream. The cinemas of the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Latvia, are also represented with their most influential artists. Through a chronology, an introduction essay, a bibliography, and over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries on filmmakers, performers, cinematographers, composers, producers, studios, genres, and outstanding films, this reference work covers the history of Russian and Soviet filmmaking from 1896 to 2007.

The Russian Cinema Reader

The Russian Cinema Reader
Author: Rimgaila Salys
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2023-09-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:
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This two-volume reader is intended to accompany undergraduate courses in the history of Russian cinema and Russian culture through film. Each volume consists of newly commissioned essays, excerpts from English language criticism and translations of Russian language essays on subtitled films which are widely taught in American and British courses on Russian film and culture. The arrangement is chronological: Volume one covers twelve films from the beginning of Russian film through the Stalin era; volume two covers twenty films from the Thaw era to the present. General introductions to each period of film history (Early Russian Cinema, Soviet Silent Cinema, Stalinist Cinema, Cinema of the Thaw, Cinema of Stagnation, Perestroika and Post-Soviet Cinema) outline its cinematic significance and provide historical context for the non-specialist reader. Essays are accompanied by suggestions for further reading. The reader will be useful both for film studies specialists and for Slavists who wish to broaden their Russian Studies curriculum by incorporating film courses or culture courses with cinematic material. Volumes one and two may be ordered separately to accommodate the timeframe and contents of courses. Volume one films: Sten’ka Razin, The Cameraman’s Revenge, The Merchant Bashkirov’s Daughter, Child of the Big City, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, Battleship Potemkin, Bed and Sofa, Man with a Movie Camera, Earth, Chapaev, Circus, Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II. Volume two films: The Cranes are Flying, Ballad of a Soldier, Lenin’s Guard, Wings, Commissar, The Diamond Arm, White Sun of the Desert, Solaris, Stalker, Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, Repentance, Little Vera, Burnt by the Sun, Brother, Russian Ark, The Return, Night Watch, The Tuner, Ninth Company, How I Ended This Summer. Authors: Birgit Beumers, Robert Bird, David Bordwell, Mikhail Brashinsky, Oksana Bulgakova, Gregory Carlson, Nancy Condee, Julian Graffy, Jeremy Hicks, Andrew Horton, Steven Hutchings, Vida Johnson, Lilya Kaganovsky, Vance Kepley, Jr., Susan Larsen, Mark Lipovetsky, Tatiana Mikhailova, Elena Monastireva-Ansdell, Joan Neuberger, Vlada Petrić, Graham Petrie, Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova, Rimgaila Salys, Elena Stishova, Vlad Strukov, Yuri Tsivian, Meghan Vicks, Josephine Woll, Denise J. Youngblood

Designing Russian Cinema

Designing Russian Cinema
Author: Eleanor Rees
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-12-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350246379
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This book highlights the significant role that production artists played when Russian cinema was still in its infancy. It uncovers Russian cinema's connections with other art forms, examining how production artists drew on both aesthetic traditions and modernist experiments in architecture, painting and theatre as they explored the new medium of cinema and its potential to engender new models of perception and forms of audience engagement. Drawing on set design sketches, archival documents and film-makers' memoirs, Eleanor Rees reveals how less-canonical films such as Behind the Screen (Kulisy ekrana, 1919) and Palace and Fortress (Dvorets i krepost ́, 1923), were remarkable from a design perspective, and also provides new readings of well-known films, such as Children of the Age (Deti veka, 1915) and Strike (Stachka, 1925). Rees brings to light information on significant but understudied figures such as Vladimir Egorov and Sergei Kozlovskii, and highlights the involvement of well-known figures such as Lev Kuleshov and Aleksandr Rodchenko. Unlike the majority of late Imperial directors and camera operators, many early-Russian production artists continued to work in cinema in the Soviet era and to draw on practices forged before the 1917 Revolution. In spanning the entire silent era, this book highlights the often overlooked continuities between the late-Imperial and early-Soviet periods of cinema, thus questioning traditional historical periodisations.

Russian War Films

Russian War Films
Author: Denise J. Youngblood
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2006-11-14
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0700617612
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War movies have long been the most influential genre in Russian cinema, so much so that in the Soviet Union's militaristic society, "cinema front" was used to describe the film industry itself. Denise J. Youngblood, an internationally recognized authority on Russian and Soviet cinema, provides the first comprehensive guide to this long-neglected genre. In this illuminating study, Youngblood explores more than 160 fiction films on Russian conflicts from World War I to Chechnya. These movies represent a wide range of cinematic styles and critical receptions, with particular emphasis on films little known in the West but popular in the USSR. While not ignoring classic war films like Chapaev and The Cranes Are Flying, Youngblood introduces readers to the films that shaped and reflected Soviet views of war, like the rousing World War II favorite Two Warriors, the Thaw classic The Living and the Dead, and the Brezhnevian extravaganza Liberation. This remarkably humanistic body of work was often at odds with official policies and depicted the futility of war. Youngblood is especially insightful regarding the relationship between Stalinism, Socialist Realism, and filmmakers in creating the war film genre during an era marked by increasing militarization, conformism, and state terror and the importance of cinema in the World War II propaganda effort. Stalin's obsession with movies led to the "revisioning" of his role in the Civil War and the "Great Patriotic War." Yet, Youngblood argues, Soviet filmmakers were not mere puppets of repressive regimes. Indeed, some filmmakers subtly subverted official politics and history in the guise of art or Hollywood-style entertainment. She brings the story to the present by showing how post-Soviet Russian filmmakers have not only turned a critical eye on the recent wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya but are also revisiting the complex realities of World War II. Through her accessible narrative, Youngblood tells a fascinating story that will appeal equally to film aficionados and history buffs. By tracing the evolution of cinema through the twists and turns of both Soviet and post-Soviet society, she helps us the role movies played in 20th century Russia, not only in the making and unmaking of political myths but also in the "writing" of history.

Inside the Film Factory

Inside the Film Factory
Author: Ian Christie
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2005-08-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1134944330
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This is the first collection to be inspired and informed by the new films and archival material that glasnost and perestroika have revealed, and the new methodological approaches that are developing in tandem. Film critics and historians from Britain, America, France and the USSR attempt the vital task of scrutinising Soviet film, and re-examining the Cold War assumptions of traditional historiography. Whereas most books on Soviet giants have glorified the directorial giants of the `golden age' of the 1920s, Inside the Film Factory also recognises the achievements of popular cinema from the pre-Revolutionary period through to the 1930s and beyond. It also evaluates the impact of Western cinema on the early experimenters of montage, Russian science fiction's influence on film-making, and the long-suppressed history of Soviet Yiddish productions. Alongside the new perspectives and source material on the much-mythologised figures of Kuleshov and Medvedkin, the book provides the first extended accounts in English of the important but neglected careers of directors Yakov Protazanov and Boris Barnet.

A Companion to Russian Cinema

A Companion to Russian Cinema
Author: Birgit Beumers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2016-07-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1118412761
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A Companion to Russian Cinema provides an exhaustive and carefully organised guide to the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia, of the Soviet era, as well as post-Soviet Russian cinema, edited by one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies. The most up-to-date and thorough coverage of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, which also effectively fills gaps in the existing scholarship in the field This is the first volume on Russian cinema to explore specifically the history of movie theatres, studios, and educational institutions The editor is one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies, and contributions come from leading experts in the field of Russian Studies, Film Studies and Visual Culture Chapters consider the arts of scriptwriting, sound, production design, costumes and cinematography Provides five portraits of key figures in Soviet and Russia film history, whose works have been somewhat neglected