Russian Film studies

By Jeremy Hicks, Queen Mary, University of London

1. Histories and Reference Works

Remarkably few works marking this years centenary of Russian cinema came out this year. J. Graffy, a hundred years of Russian film: the forgotten and the underrated, SRSC, 2: 32754, commemorates it through short articles on neglected films by 22 scholars teaching Russian film in British and american universities. mark Zak, , mw, Federalnoe agenstvo po kultur i kinematografii RF nauchno-issledovatelnyi institut kinoiskusstva, 383 pp., also claims to be a history of Russian cinema, but is in fact an interesting and useful collection of the authors articles spanning from The Cranes are Flying (1957) to Repentance (1984/87). References to the original published sources are sadly lacking. Hutchings, Others, norris, Insiders, and Kivelson, Picturing Russia are three collections which cover the theme of Russian depictions of the foreign and foreign depictions of Russians through the whole time-span of Russian cinema. is a significant collection of writings about Russian childrens film and literature. many of its essays trace the origins and incarnations of the characters throughout the history of soviet and Russian cinema and include: a. Prokhorov, : (15380); m. maiofis, , (241314); iu. leving, - - ... (31553). Peter Rollberg, Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema, lanham, scarecrow Press, xxxvi + 793 pp., supplies a brief chronology of important dates, a 20-page historical overview, and a 24-page bibliography. However, its main focus is an extensive dictionary with entries mostly on directors and actors, but also on some composers, cameramen and other participants in the film-making process, as well as some articles about film studios and individual films of note. While it is generally well informed, particularly given the fact that this is the work of a single author, specialists will find the entries on their areas of expertise woefully inadequate: that on Vertov fails to take in recent

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scholarship, e.g. on his name. this is frustrating, as such errors will be repeated ad infinitum by the wider public. natalia miloserova and Vladimir martynov, , 19862006. , Vol. 1: . . (-), mw, materik, 591 pp., is narrower in focus, and even less rigorous. this is an expansion of natalia miloserova, : (19861995). o: . . . . . . , mw, Goskino Rossiiskoi Federatsii nii kinoiskusstva, 1996, 217 pp.

2. theory
n. drubek-meyer and n. izvolov, Critical editions of films in digital formats, SRSC, 2:20516, is an attempt to establish a case for scholarly editions of films on dVd, employing footnotes and using canonical restorations and optimally displayed versions. the authors illustrate the case with overwhelmingly Russian examples, notably Kuleshovs Engineer Prites Project (1918) which has now been released commercially. NLO, 92, has a section on 1920s medium specificity film theory, especially Formalism, and includes: ia. levchenko, : (2441); iu. tsvian, , (1023). Viktor shklovsky, Literature and Cinematography, trans. irina masinovsky, introd. Richard sheldon, Champaignlondon, dalkey archive, xvii +74 pp., makes available in english this little-considered text by the formalist critic, in which he attempts to define the specific nature of cinema as lying in its privileging of plot. the edition would have benefited from an academic apparatus glossing and identifying the films referred to and a better introduction. Vladimir sokolov, , mw, 326 pp., is a collection of essays by a trained philosopher analysing the theoretical bases for film studies, with particular attention to semiotics and phenomenology.

3. Periods in Film History

silent Film. amy sargeant, Storm Over Asia, london, tauris, 104 pp., is part of the KinOFiles series of short critical studies on key films. a. Pozdniakov, . , IK, 11:47, provides some contextual detail about the first Russian film.

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l. mcReynolds, Visualising masculinity: the male sex that was not one in fin-de-sicle Russia, Kivelson, Picturing Russia, 13338, considers the sexual ambivalence of ivan mozzhukhins persona. V. Romashkov, , IK, 11:811, is the publication of the autobiography of the director of the first Russian film. see also iu. tsivian, the wise and wicked game: reediting, foreignness, and soviet film culture of the twenties, norris, Insiders, 2347. a. tuchinskaia, , IK, 11:10519, considers the importance of shaliapin for meierkhold, sh.s performance in the role of Ivan the Terrible (1915), and m.s influence upon the Russian cinema. Of similar interest are ... , .... (1929), KZ, 86:90122, and . (), KZ, 87:82107. iakov Butovskii, , KZ, 87:16376, is one of a number of articles relating to the leningrad cameraman sviatoslav Beliaev, whose work spanned the late 1920s to the early 1940s. stalin era. lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man Was Unmade: Cultural Fantasy and Male Subjectivity Under Stalin, Pittsburgh u.P., xi + 226 pp., is an ambitious and significant work which uses the Ziek-inflected vocabulary of lacanian psychoanalysis to argue that the stalinist heros virility and strength is a fantasy to compensate for anxieties over mutilation and disability. K. analyses both literary and filmic texts of the stalin era, but also looks at recent filmic and literary treatments of the stalin period by Pelevin and livnev. evgeny dobrenko, Stalinism and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution, trans. sarah Young, edinburgh u.P., ii + 263 pp., is less ground-breaking but still important, arguing that stalinist history film detraumatizes history. it is a translation of . , mw, novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 417 pp.; the english edition has a subject index, the Russian only a name index. a. Bliumbaum, : NLO, 89:13889. J. Hicks, lost in translation? early soviet sound film abroad, norris, Insiders, 11329, challenges the view that soviet sound film of the 1930s was not seen and had no influence abroad. P. Kenez, the picture of the enemy in stalinist films, ib., 96112, reworks a chapter of the authors 1992 book Cinema and Soviet Society, 19171953. e. Widdis, the cinematic pastoral

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of the 1930s, Kivelson, Picturing Russia, 17580, discusses savchenkos 1934 film , the first soviet musical, as an example of stalinist pastoral. e. Widdis, Clothing otherness in soviet cinema before 1953, norris, Insiders, 4867, highlights the use of clothing to mark characters ideologically, but shows how this becomes blurred in the stalin era. J. Woll, under the Big top: american goes to the Circus, ib., 6880, looks at the representation of foreigners in aleksandrovs Circus. s. shkolnikov, , IK, 5:97105; 6:95105: the first article is a frank account of the chaos of the first months after June 1941, and recounts how cameraman arkadii shafran was captured and then escaped from the Germans; the second article contains a memoir of a cameraman with the fleet on the Bering strait, and an account of the filming of the taking of the Reichstag. see also . , 19401941, KZ, 86:154214, and Olga dombovskaia, , KZ, 87:7781. the thaw. sergei Kapterev, Post-Stalinist Cinema and the Russian Intelligentsia, 19531960: Strategies of Self-representation, De-Stalinization, and the National Cultural Tradition, saarbrcken, mller, 420 pp., is a reassessment of the period which stresses the thaws humanist recasting of a Russian cultural tradition with universal appeal, though it excludes cinema produced in non-Russian studios. sudha Rajagopalan, Leave Disco Dancer Alone! Indian Cinema and Soviet Movie-Going After Stalin, new delhi, Yoda, xvi + 241 pp., examines the phenomenal popularity of indian films in the ussR from the 1950s to the later 1980s. W. Beilenhoff and s. Hnsgen, speaking about images: the voice of the author in Ordinary Fascism, SRSC, 2:14153, considers a number of aspects of the famous documentarys style, including its voiceover commentary and its use of stills. this articles formal emphasis is complemented by a memoir published alongside it examining the films negotiation of the censorship system: maya turovskaya, some documents from the life of a documentary film, SRSC, 2:15565. the same film is also the subject of J. Woll, mikhail Romms Ordinary Fascism, in Kivelson, Picturing Russia, 22429. V. Chernetsky, Visual language and identity performance in leonid Osykas A Stone Cross: the roots and the uprooting, SRSC, 2:26980, examines this neglected 1968 example of ukrainian poetic cinema. J. Graffy, scant sign of the thaw: fear and anxiety in the representation of foreigners in the soviet films of the Khrushchev years, Hutchings,

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Others, 2746, shows that stalin-era clichs and fear of foreigners persisted in the thaw. O. Kovalov, : , IK, 10:7372; 11:95103, sees as having been banned for stressing the cynicism of its characters, and the banality of their world, especially in its treatment of space. stagnation era. a. deBlasio, the new-Year film as a genre of post-war Russian cinema, SRSC, 2:4361, sees the stagnation-era roots of enduring aspects of contemporary Russian cinema, and argues that Riazanovs 1975 , initiated a genre that has outlived the soviet union. J. First, making soviet melodrama contemporary: conveying emotional information in the era of stagnation, SRSC, 1:2142, adds considerably to the recent consideration of melodrama in soviet and post-soviet culture by examining how the mode was adapted to the exigencies of the stagnation era. d. Gillespie, the italians are coming! italy and the other in soviet cinema, Hutchings, Others, 4761, looks at representations of italy and italians as the most important Western european image of otherness in the films of tarkovskii, mikhalkov and Riazanov. lipovetskii, , contains a number of essays relating to the animated films of the 1970s, most notably K. Kliuchkin, : (36077), and l. Kaganovsky, , , : / (37892). Glasnost, 1990s and to the Present. Kinokultura (online), 21, consists of articles generated by the Pittsburgh Russian Film symposium of 2008, under the title the ideological Occult: Russian Cinema under Putin, which attempt to identify emerging trends in contemporary Russian cinema through the analysis of a wide range of recent films. the articles are: s. Graham, two decades of post-soviet cinema: taking stock of our stocktaking; s. norris, Packaging the past: cinema and nationhood in the Putin era; m. drozdova, tremors: various types of unrest; a. Kiselev, no power can force us to live badly; G. dolgopolov, liquidating the happy end of the Putin-era. B. Beumers, Killers and gangsters: the heroes of Russian blockbusters of the Putin era, pp. 20455 of Media, Culture and Society in Putins Russia, ed. stephen White, Basingstoke, Palgrave macmillan, xiii+ 248 pp., surveys the regeneration of the Russian cinema market and recent Russian popular films transition from heroism in a virtual environment, to one encoded as real. P. Posefsky, Russian gangster films as popular history: genre, ideology and memory in Pavel lungins

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Tycoon, SRSC 2:299325, also focuses on the gangster theme, but the emphasis here is more on the representation of history. K. Bogoslovskaia and s. solntseva, ,IK, 7:13749, through the use of focus-group research, attempts to find out what female viewers see in contemporary Russian tV series. n. Condee, From emigration to e-migration: contemporaneity and the former second World, pp. 23549 of Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, ed. terry smith, Okwui enwezor and nancy Condee, durhamlondon, duke u.P., xviii +437 pp., finds evidence in a number of recent Russian films of a crisis of soviet-Russian modernity marked by deterritorialization. s. Graham, the new american other in postsoviet Russian cinema, Hutchings, Others, 95110, traces post-soviet Russian cinemas attempts to define identity through an engagement on the one hand with images of america, americans and Western values more broadly, and on the other with the naturalism of chernukha. Y. Furman, Shamara: writing and screening the female body, SRSC, 2:16781, looks at natalia andreichenkos 1994 adaptation of svetlana Vasilenkos novel in the wider context of representations of the female body in post-soviet culture, arguing that it represents a departure. m. lipovetsky, in the cuckoos nest: from a postcolonial wondertale to a post-authoritarian parable, Hutchings, Others, 6276, sees Rogozhkins The Cuckoo as paradoxically strengthening the patriarchal paradigm of power despite its apparent postcolonial tendencies, and thus expressing post-soviet societys fear of change. s. m. norris, Fools and cuckoos: the outsider as insider in post-soviet war films, norris, Insiders, 14362, looks at Rogozhkins The Cuckoo and Konchalovskiis House of Fools as challenges to the traditions of the Russian war film by focusing on outsiders; id., the old ladies of postcommunism: Gennadii sidorovs Starukhi and the fate of Russia, RusR, 67:58096, argues that the film contests dominant images of the Russian rural world by showing old women, not men, revitalizing the nation. there is a curious link between this interpretation and that of R. salys, Gleaning meaning: Harvest Time, RusR, 67:48497, which looks at marina Razbezhkinas 2004 debut feature Vremia zhatvy as a rewriting of the collective farm theme, polemicizing with the musical comedies on this theme from the 1930s and 1940s, and argues that it is the only cinematic engagement with the stalin era which focuses upon the female peasant. K. sarsenov, Russian marital migrants in contemporary film, Hutchings, Others, 18498, surveys a number of films treating Russian women who leave Russia to marry foreigners, seeing todorovskiis Interdevochka (1989) as pivotal. O. sulkin, identifying the enemy in contemporary Russian

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film, norris, Insiders, 11326, surveys three trends in representations of enemies in contemporary Russian film, seeing these trends as having political analogues in Russian society, and constituting proof of a fragile pluralism. there are a number of studies looking at images of Russians in the western media, which do not properly belong to this survey of Russian film. the most noteworthy is probably the issue of SRev (67:187) with eight articles discussing sacha Baron-Cohens Borat. On humour and satire in post-soviet film, see a. Prokhorov, debunking myths old and new: iurii mamins satires in soviet and postsoviet cinema, pp. 10115 of Uncensored? Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia, ed. Olga mesropova and seth Graham, Bloomington, slavica, viii + 246 pp., and Birgit Beumers, the peculiarities of Russian national cinema in the Rogozhkin period, ib., 11732. Collections of screenplays now appear with increasing frequency, and whilst not entirely scholarly, are a very useful resource for the scholar of contemporary Russian cinema. a particularly useful example, which includes interviews relating to each of the directors films, is Konstantin lopushanskii, . , , , sPb, aleteia, 349 pp. also of note is Pavel lungin, , sPb, seansamfora, 445 pp.

4. individual directors
Balabanov. a. anenome, about killers, freaks, and real men: the vigilante hero of aleksei Balabanovs films, norris, Insiders, 12741, examines the development of B.s male hero figures in Brother, Brother 2 and War, contrasting them with those in Of Freaks and Men. a. suk hoverkhov, . , IK, 1:6574, argues that, despite differing from one another visually, B.s films are consistent and distinct especially in their creation of a rhythm in which dialogue and editing are interdependent. F. White: Of Freaks and Men: aleksei Balabanovs critique of degenerate postsoviet society, SRSC 2:28197, argues that the film offers a postmodern commentary on contemporary Russia, finding corruption in the very pre-revolutionary past so often heralded as a corrective to the soviet period . eisenstein. mike Omahony, Sergei Eisenstein, london, Reaktion, 218 pp., is a life and works aimed at the broadest of readerships, which consequently tends to follow well-worn paths, using no archival research and almost no Russian language sources. nevertheless, it contains sensitive readings of the films, asks interesting questions and

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explores a number of the whys in a much more productive manner than previous biographies which have brought new material to light. J. neuberger, Visual dialectics: murderous laughter in eisensteins Ivan the Terrible, Kivelson, Picturing Russia, 20106, examines laughter in the Fiery Furnace scene from Part ii. J. neuberger, eisensteins cosmopolitan Kremlin: drag queens, circus clowns, slugs, and foreigners in Ivan the Terrible, norris, Insiders, 8195, argues that e.s presentation of foreigners in the film defies stalinist xenophobia and subtly celebrates cosmopolitan plurality. also on the film see d. Gillespie, sergei eisenstein and the articulation of masculinity, NZSJ, 42:153. see also V. Zabrodin, . , KZ, 86:24282; d. Biltereyst, Will we ever see Potemkin?: the historical reception and censorship of eisensteins Battleship Potemkin in Belgium (192632), SRSC, 2:519. this year has seen a number of significant publications of unpublished original works by e.: Catch up and overtake, ed., introd. and trans. R. taylor, SRSC 2:21738, makes available for the first time a 1932 article by eisenstein about Hollywood and his visit to the usa; . , KZ, 86:22741; spain, KZ, 87:1229; : , KZ, 87:3053. muratova. Kira Muratova : iskusstvo kino, ed. Zara K. abdullaeva, mw, novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 417 pp., is a substantial if diffuse collection of essays by the author with interpolated memoirs, and essays by others. (1341), conducts a chronological survey of m.s career with many quotations from interviews. there then follow a number of other essays by the author tracing particular themes or leitmotifs (announced by the titles of the chapters) in m.s work: (6789); (95105); (10620). the book also includes two essays on specific films: -. ( ) (12146); . ( ) (27792); 18 ( ) (299320). a. then examines aspects of m.s filmic style in similarly impressionistic essays: (15577); (184202); (20319); (22739); (24068). the volume also includes various reflections upon muratova and her style by prominent film critics and those who have worked with her: n. Riazantseva, (4266); m. turovskaia, (90105); H.-J. schlegel, , (14752); V. Gvozditskii, (18083); n. dziubenko, (22039); a. Vasilev, (26976); G. Kariuk, (29398).

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mikhail iampolskii, Muratova. Opyt kinoantropologiia, sPb, seans, 308 pp., is more insightful, but lacking contextual colour. this claims to be the first book about muratova in Russian, which is true in the sense that it is the first singly authored book about the director. it is certainly a very important attempt to define ms filmic world [kinomir], which the author praises for standing outside the bankrupt Russian cinematic tradition and creating a sustained philosophically informed reflection upon humanity, an anthropology embedded in a film style described as an antisymbolism or descriptive phenomenology. i. sandomirskaia, a glossolalic Glasnost and the re-tuning of the soviet subject: sound performance in Kira muratovas Asthenic Syndrome, SRSC, 2:6383, sees the films use of sound as the key to appreciating it as the most insightful analysis of the Perestroika period. see also J. taubman, Kira muratovas eccentric cinema, pp. 13344 of Uncensored?, Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia, ed. Olga mesropova and seth Graham, Bloomington, slavica, viii + 246 pp. i. shilova, Renata litvinova: actress and persona, Kinokultura, 19, considers the creation of l.s acting persona and m.s use of it. Protazanov. KZ, 88, is entirely devoted to the films of P. its contents are as follows: V. listov, (2531); P. Rollberg, (3243); m. Kireeva and e. margolit, , . (4452); t. sergeeva, : (5364); iu. tsivian, : (6578); V. Korotkii, . (7986); n. nusinova, (87103); . .. .. . 19201923 (10455); i. Grashchekova, !?.. (17886); a. Gusev, (18792); d. Kurakina-mustafina, (193203); a. deriabin, . - (20406); . Khokhlova, : ? (20714); P. Bagrov, (21532); V. Batalin and G. malysheva, . (23339); . . . (240314); a. lopatin,

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(31527); n. Rostova, (32832); l. shagalova, ... (333 34); . (33545); .. . , (346409). see also J. Graffy, the foreigners journey into consciousness in early soviet cinema: the case of Protazanovs Tommi, norris, Insiders, 122. sokurov. J. alaniz, nature, illusion and excess in sokurovs Mother and Son, SRSC, 2:183204, argues that instead of presenting a view of nature free from human intervention, sokurov in fact carefully manipulates his images of nature, and draws on a range of intertexts, especially Romantic traditions of landscape painting. see also i. deKeghel, sokurovs Russian ark: reflections on the Russia/ europe theme, Hutchings, Others, 7794. thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick, and Wong Kar-wai , lanham, md, Rowman and littlefield, xi + 161 pp., reflects superficially upon the painterly, and the image ideology of sokurov, and is similarly weak on tarkovskii (3135). tarkovskii. andrei tarkovskii, . 1970 86, Florence, istituto internazionale andrej tarkovskij, 623 pp., the Russian edition of the diaries, is an important event for the study of t. While it proclaims itself the first complete edition in Russian of the diaries, and is conceived of as the first part of a complete edition of t.s writings, the text differs from other publications, lacks a proper scholarly apparatus and is likely to have been compiled according to non-scholarly principles. Paola Pedicone and aleksandr lavrin, . , mw, enas, 408 pp., is a highly variegated collection of memoir accounts, interviews, and reflections on the lives of arsenii and andrei tarkovskii, tied together by l.s own recollections. , ed. evgenii tsymbal and Viacheslav Okeanskii, ivanovo, talka, 224 pp., tends overwhelmingly to concentrate on religious, philosophical and literary contexts and parallels in t.s work. essays that stand out and do not follow this pattern include n. savchenkova, (9098), and e. tsymbal, : (11929). . ., ed. Paola Volkova, mw, ast Khranitel-Zebra e, 495 pp., contains various memoirs about t. together with the Russian book publication of his lectures, known in english as Sculpting in Time. a significant work, chiefly for its highly attentive readings of the films, is Robert Bird, Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of

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Cinema, london, Reaktion, 248 pp. Tarkovsky, ed. nathan dunne, london, Black dog, 463 pp., is an ambitious but very uneven collection of essays ranging from the insightful and informative to the selfindulgent. notable amongst its achievements are the first publication in english of the influential essay by J.-P. sartre, letter on the critique of ivans childhood (3445). the other essays are: a. Rogatchevski, Zoya in the mirror: leo arnshtams influence on andrei tarkovsky (4657); V. strukov, Virtualisation of self and space in tarkovskys Solaris (5879); G. loughlin, tarkovskys trees (8195); a. Renfrew, Before learning to speak: genre in tarkovskys early features (96121); s. sandler, the absent father, the stillness of film: tarkovsky , sokurov, and loss (12647); V. Johnson and G. Petrie, Painting and film: Andrei Rublev and Solaris (14959); J. macgillivray, andrei tarkovskys madonna del parto (16175); V. Golstein, the energy of anxiety (177205); R. Bird, the imprinted image (20729); B. sarkar, threnody for modernity (23457); J. Quandt, tarkovsky and Bresson: music, suicide, apocalypse (25881); n. dunne, tarkovsky and Flaubert: The Sacrifice and Saint Anthony (282301); n. synessios, From wood to marble: tarkovskys journey to ithaca (30219); d. miall, Resisting interpretation (32033); e. tsymbal, sculpting the stalker: towards a new language of cinema (33851); i. Brown, tarkovsky in london: the production of Boris Godunov (35269); B. menzel, tarkovsky in Berlin (37085); m. Forster, What would tarkovsky do? (394405). also of interest are l. Kaganovsky, Solaris and the white, white screen, Kivelson, Picturing Russia, 23032, and a. skalandis, , IK, 2:10427. using excerpts from diaries, correspondence and some memoirs, this latter article documents, but also examines, the relationship between tarkovskii and the strugatskii brothers, with particular attention to the making of , underlining the point of view of the strugatskii brothers. a. and B. strugatskii, , IK, 2:12946, is the first publication of an early treatment for tarkovskiis last film, . Vertov. dziga Vertov, . Vol. 2. , mw, eisenstein tsentr, 648 pp., is a much fuller collection of V.s writings and more reliable than the previous 1966 collection. unlike Vol. 1 of this edition, however, it does not contain the excellent commentaries of Russias leading V. specialist, a. deriabin. m. iampolskii, . , KZ, 87:5465; O. Kovalov, , IK, 3:7080; 4:5261, attempts to see Vertovs modernism in a new light by comparing Man with a Movie Camera to Ulysses and discussing

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images of women in the same film and Lullaby. l. m. mjolsness, dziga Vertovs Soviet Toys: commerce, commercialization and cartoons, SRSC, 2:24767, is the first significant attempt in english to consider Vertovs animated films. see also t. tode, , KZ, 87:10817.

V. uKRainian studies
POstPOned