Author: Alexander Prokhorov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Author: Lida Oukaderova
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025302708X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union experienced a dramatic resurgence in cinematic production. The period of the Soviet Thaw became known for its relative political and cultural liberalization; its films, formally innovative and socially engaged, were swept to the center of international cinematic discourse. In The Cinema of the Soviet Thaw, Lida Oukaderova provides an in-depth analysis of several Soviet films made between 1958 and 1967 to argue for the centrality of space—as both filmic trope and social concern—to Thaw-era cinema. Opening with a discussion of the USSR's little-examined late-fifties embrace of panoramic cinema, the book pursues close readings of films by Mikhail Kalatozov, Georgii Danelia, Larisa Shepitko and Kira Muratova, among others. It demonstrates that these directors' works were motivated by an urge to interrogate and reanimate spatial experience, and through this project to probe critical issues of ideology, social progress, and subjectivity within post–Stalinist culture.

Author: Caroline Damiens
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350269891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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In A Siberian History of Soviet Film, Caroline Damiens explores how the depictions of the indigenous 'Peoples of the North' in Soviet cinema and television evolved between 1920 and 1980. Damiens combines a detailed analysis of key works such as Forest People (1928), Igdenbu (1930), Dersu Uzala (1961 & 1975), Tymancha's Friend (1969) and The Most Beautiful Ships (1972), with primary sources like press articles, archives, and interviews, to reveal how these cinematic portrayals were created and negotiated, providing insight into the concepts of progress and authenticity in the Soviet context. She emphasises the role of indigenous individuals in shaping their cinematic image, both in front of and behind the camera, highlighting the works of lesser-known figures like Suntsai Geonka, Zinaida Pikunova, and Iurii Rytkheu. In doing so, Damiens emphasises the multifaceted nature of film, where interpretations differ based on the perspectives of those involved. Using a decolonial approach and drawing from extensive archival materials, Damiens prompts a re-evaluation of the Soviet cinematic past and present by centring indigenous voices in the narrative. In doing so, she provides a thorough exploration of the intricate relationship between culture, representation, and identity in Soviet cinema.

Author: Claire Knight
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501776185
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Stalin's Final Films explores a neglected period in the history of Soviet cinema, breathing new life into a body of films long considered moribund as the pinnacle of Stalinism. While film censorship reached its apogee in this period and fewer films were made, film attendance also peaked as Soviet audiences voted with their seats and distinguished a clearly popular postwar cinema. Claire Knight examines the tensions between official ideology and audience engagement, and between education and entertainment, inherent in these popular films, as well as the financial considerations that shaped and constrained them. She explores how the Soviet regime used films to address the major challenges faced by the USSR after the Great Patriotic War (World War II), showing how war dramas, spy thrillers, Stalin epics, and rural comedies alike were mobilized to consolidate an official narrative of the war, reestablish Stalinist orthodoxy, and dramatize the rebuilding of socialist society. Yet, Knight also highlights how these same films were used by filmmakers more experimentally, exploring a diverse range of responses to the ideological crisis that lay at the heart of Soviet postwar culture, as a victorious people were denied the fruits of their sacrificial labor. After the war, new heroes were demanded by both the regime and Soviet audiences, and filmmakers sought to provide them, with at times surprising results. Stalin's Final Films mines Soviet cinema as an invaluable resource for understanding the unique character of postwar Stalinism and the cinema of the most repressive era in Soviet history.

Author: Jane Costlow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317099214
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Bringing together a team of scholars from the diverse fields of geography, literary studies, and history, this is the first volume to study water as a cultural phenomenon within the Russian/Soviet context. Water in this context is both a cognitive and cultural construct and a geographical and physical phenomenon, representing particular rivers (the Volga, the Chusovaia in the Urals, the Neva) and bodies of water (from Baikal to sacred springs and the flowing water of nineteenth-century estates), but also powerful systems of meaning from traditional cultures and those forged in the radical restructuring undertaken in the 1930s. Individual chapters explore the polyvalence and contestation of meanings, dimensions, and values given to water in various times and spaces in Russian history. The reservoir of symbolic association is tapped by poets and film-makers but also by policy-makers, the popular press, and advertisers seeking to incite reaction or drive sales. The volume's emphasis on the cultural dimensions of water will link material that is often widely disparate in time and space; it will also serve as the methodological framework for the analysis undertaken both within chapters and in the editors' introduction.

Author: Nancy Condee
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644693747
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Cinemasaurus examines contemporary Russian cinema as a new visual economy, emerging over three decades after the Soviet collapse. Focusing on debates and films exhibited at Russian and US public festivals where the films have premiered, the volume’s contributors—the new generation of US scholars studying Russian cinema—examine four issues of Russia’s transition: (1) its imperial legacy, (2) the emergence of a film market and its new genres, (3) Russia’s uneven integration into European values and hierarchies, (4) the renegotiation of state power vis-à-vis arthouse and independent cinemas. An introductory essay frames each of the four sections, with 90 films total under discussion, concluding with a historical timeline and five interviews of key film-industry figures formative of the historical context.

Author: Denise J. Youngblood
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700620052
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace, one of the world’s greatest film epics, originated as a consequence of the Cold War. Conceived as a response to King Vidor’s War and Peace, Bondarchuk’s surpassed that film in every way, giving the USSR one small victory in the cultural Cold War for hearts and minds. This book, taking up Bondarchuk’s masterpiece as a Cold War film, an epic, a literary adaptation, a historical drama, and a rival to Vidor’s Hollywood version, recovers—and expands—a lost chapter in the cultural and political history of the twentieth century. Like many great works of literature, Tolstoy’s epic tale proved a major challenge to filmmakers. After several early efforts to capture the story’s grandeur, it was not until 1956 that King Vidor dared to bring War and Peace to the big screen. American critics were lukewarm about the film, but it was shown in the Soviet Union to popular acclaim. This book tells the story of how the Soviet government, military, and culture ministry—all eager to reclaim this Russian masterpiece from their Cold War enemies—pulled together to make Bondarchuk’s War and Peace possible. Bondarchuk, an actor who had directed only one film, was an unlikely choice for director, and yet he produced one of the great works of Soviet cinema, a worthy homage to Tolstoy’s masterpiece—an achievement only sweetened when Russia’s Cold War adversary recognized it with the Academy Award’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 1968. Denise Youngblood examines the film as an epic (and at seven hours long, released in four parts, at a cost of nearly $700,000,000 in today’s dollars, it was certainly that), a literary adaptation, a complex reflection on history, and a significant artifact of the cultural Cold War between the US and the USSR. From its various angles, the book shows us Bondarchuk’s extraordinary film in its many dimensions—aesthetic, political, and historical—even as it reveals what the film tells us about how Soviet patriotism and historical memory were constructed during the Cold War.

Author: Adrian Poole
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472578651
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 854

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Book Description
Great Shakespeareans presents a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. An essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

Author: Mark Thornton Burnett
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472539478
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. In this volume, leading scholars assess the contribution of Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Grigori Kozintsev and Franco Zeffirelli to the afterlife and reception of Shakespeare and his plays. Each substantial contribution assesses the double impact of Shakespeare on the figure covered and of the figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, provide a sketch of their subject's intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider cultural context, including comparison with other figures or works within the same field.

Author: Peter Rollberg
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442268425
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 891

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Book Description
Russian and Soviet cinema occupies a unique place in the history of world cinema. Legendary filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Sergei Paradjanov have created oeuvres that are being screened and studied all over the world. The Soviet film industry was different from others because its main criterion of success was not profit, but the ideological and aesthetic effect on the viewer. Another important feature is Soviet cinema’s multinational (Eurasian) character: while Russian cinema was the largest, other national cinemas such as Georgian, Kazakh, and Ukrainian played a decisive role for Soviet cinema as a whole. The Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema provides a rich tapestry of factual information, together with detailed critical assessments of individual artistic accomplishments. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema contains a chronology, an introduction, and a bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on directors, performers, cinematographers, composers, designers, producers, and studios. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Russian and Soviet Cinema.