Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2210875
B. Beumers
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Pub Date : 2023-05-03DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2205285
E. V. Prokhorova
ABSTRACT This article explores the development of the script form in Soviet/Russian scriptwriting, which has drawn particular attention in the 1920s, when a polemic arose among film theorists and practitioners concerning the ‘iron’ and ‘emotional’ script. Sergei Eisenstein and Aleksandr Rzheshevskii, among others, favoured the emotional script with its expressive record of the future film to the rigid production plan of the ‘iron script’. In the 1930s, this polemic was resolved with the emergence of the ‘literary’ script, which united elements of both forms. Valentin Turkin, a pedagogue at Moscow’s Film School and author of the first Soviet textbook on film dramaturgy, played an important role in teaching of scriptwriting. Turkin defined the script as a heterogeneous literary form, an approach that influenced film dramaturgy into the 1960s–1970s, when Turkin’s theses were developed further: the scriptwriter’s work on the future film and on the script’s subsequent screen realisation are fruitful only through the literary script form. This approach dominated in teaching well into the 1990s, until the American format of the script was introduced with the first translations of textbooks into Russian, effectively returning to the ‘iron’ script form.
{"title":"The script form in Soviet and Russian film studies","authors":"E. V. Prokhorova","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2205285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2205285","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the development of the script form in Soviet/Russian scriptwriting, which has drawn particular attention in the 1920s, when a polemic arose among film theorists and practitioners concerning the ‘iron’ and ‘emotional’ script. Sergei Eisenstein and Aleksandr Rzheshevskii, among others, favoured the emotional script with its expressive record of the future film to the rigid production plan of the ‘iron script’. In the 1930s, this polemic was resolved with the emergence of the ‘literary’ script, which united elements of both forms. Valentin Turkin, a pedagogue at Moscow’s Film School and author of the first Soviet textbook on film dramaturgy, played an important role in teaching of scriptwriting. Turkin defined the script as a heterogeneous literary form, an approach that influenced film dramaturgy into the 1960s–1970s, when Turkin’s theses were developed further: the scriptwriter’s work on the future film and on the script’s subsequent screen realisation are fruitful only through the literary script form. This approach dominated in teaching well into the 1990s, until the American format of the script was introduced with the first translations of textbooks into Russian, effectively returning to the ‘iron’ script form.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"80 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44379038","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}
Pub Date : 2023-04-20DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2203534
P. Stepanova
ABSTRACT Nonverbal semiotics offers new approaches to the analysis of corporeal codes that define cultural interpretations, social communications and creative processes of art works. Grigorii Kreidlin has singled out three groups of nonverbal corporeal signs, which help analyse more concisely the embodiment in contemporary cinema of a protagonist who, at the level of body techniques (according to Mauss), becomes a conductor for a complex system of interactions between man and the world. The protagonist’s selfhood is called into question by an elusive space (Augé’s ‘non-places’), which defines the motif of a wandering hero, who tries to escape from roles imposed by society but is unable to achieve his dream. The films made between 2017–2022 by Kira Kovalenko, Kantemir Balagov, Vladimir Bitokov and Aleksandr Zolotukhin – graduates of the first director’s workshop by Aleksandr Sokurov – are analysed from the point of view of nonverbal corporeal signs. In their works, corporeal techniques of performers and characters express issues of violence, as is evident in the use of regulator gestures that halt dialogue in family relations; illustrator gestures that designate non-freedom of corporeal expressions in choreographed dances; and emblem gestures that bring corporeality to the level of ‘illness as metaphor’.
{"title":"Nonverbal corporeal signs in the works of Aleksandr Sokurov’s students","authors":"P. Stepanova","doi":"10.1080/17503132.2023.2203534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503132.2023.2203534","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Nonverbal semiotics offers new approaches to the analysis of corporeal codes that define cultural interpretations, social communications and creative processes of art works. Grigorii Kreidlin has singled out three groups of nonverbal corporeal signs, which help analyse more concisely the embodiment in contemporary cinema of a protagonist who, at the level of body techniques (according to Mauss), becomes a conductor for a complex system of interactions between man and the world. The protagonist’s selfhood is called into question by an elusive space (Augé’s ‘non-places’), which defines the motif of a wandering hero, who tries to escape from roles imposed by society but is unable to achieve his dream. The films made between 2017–2022 by Kira Kovalenko, Kantemir Balagov, Vladimir Bitokov and Aleksandr Zolotukhin – graduates of the first director’s workshop by Aleksandr Sokurov – are analysed from the point of view of nonverbal corporeal signs. In their works, corporeal techniques of performers and characters express issues of violence, as is evident in the use of regulator gestures that halt dialogue in family relations; illustrator gestures that designate non-freedom of corporeal expressions in choreographed dances; and emblem gestures that bring corporeality to the level of ‘illness as metaphor’.","PeriodicalId":41168,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema","volume":"17 1","pages":"113 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44692508","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}
Pub Date : 2023-04-20DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2202071
Daniela Schwartz
ABSTRACT This article interrogates the material history and conceptual origins of Sergei Loznitsa’s The Trial (2018), an archival documentary that re-edits restored footage and deleted scenes from Iakov Posel’skii’s 1931 propaganda documentary 13 Days, one of the Soviet Union’s earliest sound films. Shelved in state archives soon after its release, Posel’skii’s documentary chronicles the infamous Industrial Party Trial, in which a cabal of scientists and engineers were accused of undermining Soviet industry. To tell this story, The Trial relies on a lack of commentary supplemented by novel sound editing techniques including the addition of seemingly indexical sounds. This article investigates such devices as an attempt to immerse the viewer in a moment in time, thus creating a realistic experience of a historical event. In doing so, it provides insight into the cinematic techniques Loznitsa uses to repurpose archival materials, and touches on the role of the audience in Loznitsa’s film.
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Pub Date : 2023-04-18DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2204039
Marshall Deutelbaum
Drawing on archival research and the established literature, Designing Russian Cinema charts the shifting attitudes of critics and set designers, termed here ‘production artists’, toward what constitutes proper set design during the silent era. Initially, this meant painterly inspired and ethnographically correct sets for films about rural life that were thought to reflect the Russian character. By the mid-1910s, these influences waned as set design came to be recognised as an independent art form. In films about urban life, complex spatial compositions became commonplace during this time, and individual designers established long-term working relationships with specific directors. Following the Revolution, set designers sought to envision the ideals and realities of the Soviet way of life in a variety of ways. Andrei Burov’s sets for Sergei Eisenstein’s The General Line (1926), for example, present a utopian ideal, while Sergei Kozlovskii’s almost barren interior sets for The Girl with a Hatbox (1927) capture the everyday reality of contemporary living space. Eventually, the set design in such films as Your Acquaintance (1927) and Golden Mountains (1931) start to reflect the psychology of characters. Rees focuses a thematically defined chapter – ‘The Rural Environment’, ‘The Domestic Interior’, ‘The Workplace’ – on each stage in this evolution of set design. An additional chapter, ‘Artistic Arenas’, traces instances of self-referential set designs depicting artistic practice and performance across the entire silent period. An appendix of eight essays by such set designers as Kozlovskii, Burov, Lev Kuleshov and Sergei Iutkevich, along with others, offers readers a direct view of what some key designers themselves thought the function of set design should be. The overall result is a rich, coherent survey of the progress of Russian cinema viewed from the previously under-developed vantage point of those responsible for what the films looked like. Focusing on the work of set designers enables Rees to trace out lines of influence among them. This allows her, for example, to reassess the contemporary praise for the sets that Vasilii Rakhal’s designed for Strike (1925).
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Pub Date : 2023-04-13DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2202066
Ian Garner
provides multiple readings for a now cult-classic Russian film. One final note of concern is the need for better editing by the publisher. For example, Pribytie poezda is rendered as both Arrival of Train (14) and Arrival of the Train (21). Also, a copyeditor might have noted missing articles and the imprecise use of language that begins to undermine confidence in a text meant to be assigned to students. Here, I would expect better editorial support from the publisher to its authors.
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Pub Date : 2023-04-12DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2202065
F. White
illuminating it through the work of Deleuze and Bergson on duration, memory and the filmimage, with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy, specifically his notions of intertwining/chiasm and the flesh of the world. The inclusion of these three philosophers, among others, enhances the enquiry into the different ways in which the film achieves transcendence. Starting with the film’s final dream scene, Efird explores the instability and fluidity of subjectivity as it interacts with temporality, spatiality and memory – in essence demonstrating the ubiquity of intersubjectivity as that of a primal intercorporeality. This intercorporeality, or ‘interpenetration’ (141), is shown to exist not just between the different characters, but also between them and the material and natural worlds, between their actual and virtual realities and, further, between personal and historical fields. The text itself in this chapter is a profound meditation into the diverse ways in which Tarkovsky’s camera makes visible the realms of an invisible, pre-verbal, all-encompassing state that is best captured by notions such as transcendence and the absolute. Throughout the book, Efird burrows into the sinews of the film, painstakingly attending to how the film-maker ‘attempts to create a kind of aperture into the Absolute through a seemingly paradoxical concentration on the physical world’ (137). How deliberate was Tarkovsky in rendering to film the deeper structures, meanings and relationships that Efird’s book posits and explores? Whatever the answer, this text elucidates much that frequently remains absent from analyses of Ivan’s Childhood and, in the process, reveals something crucial about the complex interlacing of temporality, subjectivity, memory and experience – within and beyond the film. Furthermore, it addresses with fierce commitment the ways in which ‘eternity opens through the material reality of the present moment’ (140) in Tarkovsky’s work.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-27DOI: 10.1080/17503132.2023.2193009
Stefan Lacny
ABSTRACT This article examines the presentation of Polish characters in Soviet cinema from 1925 to 1939. It argues that the many films made on the so-called ‘Polish theme’ in these years reveal a persistent Soviet anxiety towards Poland, which appears as a potential aggressor representing a military and ideological threat to the USSR in its western borderlands. Through close analysis of selected films from the corpus, the article demonstrates how Soviet cinema processed the perceived threat from Poland by means of gendered characterisations of Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Most commonly, these characterisations take the form of depictions of sexual violence committed by male Poles against female Ukrainians and Belarusians, a repeated narrative feature designed to convey to Soviet audiences the danger posed by Poland to Eastern Slavs on either side of the Polish-Soviet border. Likewise, though, the films seek to alleviate spectatorial concerns by portraying a corrupted patriarchal hierarchy among Polish protagonists that represents a parodied inversion of heteronormative gender standards. By conveying the Polish danger to Soviet nationalities and simultaneously disavowing it through insinuations of Polish societal weakness, Soviet filmmakers aimed to strike a balance between communicating and assuaging spectatorial anxieties towards their western neighbour.
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