Nonverbal corporeal signs in the works of Aleksandr Sokurov’s students

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’.