INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CULTURAL RESEARCH

Victor K. BELYAKOV

All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK), Moscow, Russia
Doctoral Research Scholar of the Chair of Film Studies
Filmmaker, Scriptwriter

"Instrumentalization of newsreel": filming of events of the year 1917 in the changing historical context

The article discusses surviving chronicle documentary films made during the February Revolution of 1917 and the October coup of 1917, and are now stored in the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents. These documentaries are divided into completed films and filming materials, which, in turn, are a kind of mounted chronicle dedicated to one or another event, or simply a collection of chronicle episodes of that period glued together outside of a certain logic. The references to real archive units, which now store in themselves both films and individual cinematographs, are indicated. Analyzed their names and names of companies that have created certain films. Separately, films and materials relating to the events in Petrograd and films and materials relating to the events in Moscow are described in detail. The description of these documentaries is made with reference to real events of that time with the purpose of completeness of representation about them. All the examined documentaries are clearly divided into those devoted to the events of the February Revolution of 1917, the events between February and October, and the events connected with the October coup of 1917. At the same time, when examining film documents, real historical details of those or other events are compared with what has been captured by cameramen of that time. An attempt is made to answer the question of why this is captured, and not something else. The motives and the grounds for various shots taken are commented on. What was the importance of capturing these or other heroes and circumstances?
The use of these documentaries and materials in Soviet movies of a later time is analyzed. At the same time, attention is drawn to those fragments and episodes that, due to various ideological reasons, drop out of the cinematographic life in due course or are added to the strength of the formed mythical idea of the events of the past. At the same time, attention is drawn to the work with the source materials of both individual Soviet documentaries and to the creation of certain mythologies using material from Soviet feature films.

Key words: revolutionary newsreel, the February revolution, the October revolution, motion-picture film, film document, image of the past.

References

Dmitry L. KARAVAEV

All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK), Moscow, Russia
Research Institute of Film Art
Leading Research Fellow

Soviet Newsreel Stories on the Anniversaries of the 1917 October Revolution as Instrument of Development of Historical Memory

The essay analyses the formation of the collective memorial image of the October Revolution by means of newsreel stories about the Revolution anniversary celebrations between 1922 and 1957 and, consequently, transformations of the priorities and their variations in the formation of the image of the Revolution.
The objects of this study are documentary films and newsreels (such as In the Land of Lenin, 1927; The Great Feast, 1937; Kinopravda, Sovkinozhurnal, Novosti Dnya, as well as the anniversary specials The 30th October and The 35th October). The author of the essay analyses the audio-visual features of the prints seen at the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive.
Special attention was paid to the presence at the celebration events of such well-known political figures as Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, Lavrentii Beria and Kliment Voroshilov); their status within the celebratory events and the representation of this status in cinematographic documents; the historical and social context of the events; the participation of the popular masses; and the celebrations’ atmosphere and paraphernalia.
The author accentuates the cinematographic presentation of the anniversary events (the voiceover, intertitles, score, editing, camera positions and angles, etc.). The author concludes that the presentation of memorial events connected to the October Revolution had first of all opportunistic servo-propaganda function. For the party and administrative apparatus, which, among other things, organized memorial events and promoted the execution of newsreels, it was of utmost importance to implant in mass consciousness the projection of the current political elites rather than memorial images of the Revolution’s personalities and events.

Key words: October Revolution anniversaries, jubilee newsreels, Soviet holidays, memorial images of the October Revolution, Stalin in Soviet newsreels, Soviet newsreels.

References

Alexander ZOELLER

Film University Babelsberg, Potsdam, Germany
PhD Candidate, Fellow at Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM)

German Wartime Propaganda, the Russian Revolution, and the Film Archives: A Fragmentary Legacy

Film propaganda during World War I was characterized by the deliberate substitution of civilian war correspondents with state-sponsored reporters, photographers, and cameramen. In Germany, the Bild- und Filmamt (Bufa) was installed to monopolize all film- and photography-based war reporting, giving the German military considerable control over the image of war, and paving the way for film to be used as a medium to influence mass audiences. In 1918, as a consequence of the Russian Revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, German war cinematographers were deployed in the newly-occupied territories of the Baltics, Ukraine, and even the Caucasus. While this engagement was short-lived, ending with the German armistice signed on November 11, 1918, it resulted in a number of documentary shorts filmed on the territory of the former Russian Empire. These films were originally distributed by Bufa, the immediate precursor of UFA – Universum Film AG. Beyond 1918, the films were again circulated in the Weimar Republic, despite their original purpose as war propaganda – and they continue to be drawn upon even today as illustrative material in commercial film and television productions about World War I. The paper provides information on Bufa, the body of films in question, and their legacy in film archives until the present day. The author argues that Bufa productions transitioned between very different archival, political, and ideological systems, and may serve as an example of the changing significance and historical value attributed to historical film across the profound societal and cultural transformations of the 20th century.

Key words: film archives, film heritage, film propaganda, October Revolution, remembrance culture, war reporting, World War I.

References

Pavel TALEROV

St. Petersburg branch of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia
Director of the Educational Center for Resource Management of State and Municipal Orders of the Institute of Additional Vocational Education
PhD in Historical Sciences, Associate Professor

“Lovely, Brothers, Is to Live…„: The Filmic Life of Nestor Makhno

Nestor Makhno, the national commander of the Civil War, is one of the key figures in Russian history at the beginning of the 20th century. His unordinary character and tragic fate repeatedly are inspired many writers and artists to create stories and novels, and filmmakers – for various adaptations in which he acted as one of the main characters. This article is devoted to the study of the screen image of N. I. Makhno from the first Soviet film of the early 1920s until today. No sooner had the Civil War died out when the viewer saw the first Soviet thriller "The Red Small Devils" based on the story of P. A. Blyakhin, and we got acquainted with the long series "Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno" in the post-Soviet times. Makhno acted as the main character in these films. And he appeared in episodes in other films, which were many. But these episodes and images were bright and very memorable. In particular, in all the adaptations of Tolstoy's trilogy "Walking by the Flours", the performers of the role of Makhno talented carried out the author's ideas of this epic work in the mind of the viewer, albeit in view of the changing political conjuncture. B. P. Chirkov’s role of Nestor Makhno in the adaptation of the novel Vs. Ivanova "Parkhomenko" is attributed to the masterpieces of Soviet cinema.
Usually, the Directors did not seek to show this historical personality and to reveal the phenomenon of Makhno and the Makhnovshchina, to give an objective assessment of the historical facts, but only used this name for their film’s hero, for the subject to the general ideological and political line of the current moment. Makhno’s character often took a grotesque caricature form in the years of Soviet power. It’s causing negative emotions and rejection for the viewers. At the same time, all these films were very popular and are carried a certain ideological burden to the broad masses. Rethinking Russian history in the post-Soviet period has also affected the change for the approach to portraying historical characters. Although the screen image of Makhno in our time also is significantly different from its real prototype, nevertheless, it does not create a repulsive impression and motivates the viewers to respect for the historical past of their homeland – Russia and its in-depth study.

Key words: anarchism, Nestor Makhno, political domination, state, revolution, Civil War, Soviet cinema, screen adaptation, A. N. Tolstoy, P. A. Blyakhin, A. Ya. Parkhomenko, B. P. Chirkov, V.S. Zolotukhin, G. R. Saifulin, P. Yu. Derevyanko.

References

Andrey I. APOSTOLOV

All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK), Moscow, Russia
Research Institute of Film Art
Senior Research Fellow
Gorky Film Studio, Chief Editor

Imagining a Victim: Victimhood in the Context of Transformation of Historical Revolutionary Narrative in Stalinist Cinema

This article traces the changes in the treatment of the pathos of sacrifice in the artistic discourse of the Soviet culture during the transition from the 1920s revolutionary romanticism to the conservative tendencies of the Stalinist era. Despite the prevailing stereotypes of the demand that existed for the ethos of self-sacrifice in totalitarian culture, Stalinist cinema of the 1930s, in line with general conservative tendencies, dispels the revolutionary pathos of sacrifice: a potential victim of “the enemies of the people” always miraculously survives, in order to bring the “wreckers” to severe justice. This plot structure essentially legitimizes the escalation of state terror, ascribing its initiative not to the leader but to “the people,” personified in the main hero who survives an attempt on his life. What remains open to interpretation is the question of the prime cause for the compulsive repetition of the storyline featuring a murder attempt and a survival of the main hero. One possibility would be that in the situation of the re-coding of the holy sacrificial victim in the name of the revolution into a victim pure and simple, the status of the victim-sacrifice becomes ambiguous and is discarded, but a murder attempt remains as a trace of the sacrificial tradition. Another possibility is that the storyline with an unsuccessful murder attempt is important for legitimization in order to underline an asymmetric nature of reciprocal violence: the violence of a murder attempt is sneaky and underhanded, while the violence of terror is presented as lawful and just; the victim survives a murder attempt because the “people” that the main character represents cannot be destroyed through enemy actions. One other possible explanation is that this is a transformation of a mythologeme of a resurrection of a God or a cultural hero after an act of self-sacrifice; a mythologeme that in the context of atheism cannot be presented as a literal resurrection after death.

Key words: Victim, victimhood, Stalin, terror, revolution, enemy, assassination attempt, cinema.

References

Jeremy HICKS

Queen Mary University of London, UK
Professor of Russian Culture and Film Head of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures

The Cult of Personality in Mikhail Romm’s Films

This article is an examination of the ‘cult of personality’ in the films of Soviet director, Mikhail Il´ich Romm. While his 1965 documentary Ordinary Fascism has been seen as a coded denunciation of Stalin’s cult of personality posing ostensibly as a critique of Nazism, Romm is also one of the creators of the cults of both Lenin and Stalin in Soviet cinema, with Lenin in October (1937) and Lenin in 1918 (1938). These are the first films to place Lenin at the centre of their dramatic structure, and they also place Stalin alongside him. Following Stalin’s death, Romm’s writings and statements condemned Soviet cinema’s creation and promotion of the Stalin cult, but in his documentary films, he analysed and criticised the personality cults of Hitler and Mao Zedong, but never Stalin. Moreover, in two of his films, he attempted to rescue Lenin from the monumentalising tendencies around him, in an attempt to reassess him as a more accessible, genuinely popular figure leading through persuasion rather than coercion.
The article traces this process of reclaiming Lenin in Romm’s film: Living Lenin, a 1958 film comprised almost entirely from newsreel footage of Lenin taken while he was alive. This was re-edited and supplied with a new voice-over in 1969, with an even greater emphasis on Lenin’s private life. The same process is evident in First Pages (1970), a documentary that examines the evolution of depictions of Lenin in Soviet cinema, arguing that it emerged from a desire to respond to popular demand rather than from a prescription from above. Romm sees a return not only to Lenin, but also to the methods of the 1920s, especially documentary imagined as more truthful and purer, as key to the renewal of the Soviet project. What is added to the silent documentary is a highly personal voice-over spoken by Romm himself that is central to his new genre of the ‘film-reflection’, the first example of which was Ordinary Fascism . It was followed by And Yet I Still Believe (1975), a film about the 1968 student movement that was ultimately completed by Romm’s own students following his death before finishing it in 1971. Here Romm once again denounced a personality cult, that of Mao Zedong, in China. Taken together we see Romm’s final documentary films are a central part of a sustained attempt to reclaim Communist ideals and Leninism from what he perceives as its contamination by Stalinism.

Boris V. REYFMAN

Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Cultural Research, Department of History and Theory of Culture
PhD in Cultural Studies, Associate Professor

Soviet Constructivism and the Theory of a New Vision by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Difference in Understanding of the Meaning of Cultural Revolution

In the article, the programs of the revolutionary change of society and culture, proposed by Soviet constructivism and the theory of the new vision of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, are compared. The connection of these programs with the "anti-sign" attitudes of European avant-garde art is considered, expressed in the avant-garde's desire to free their works from any iconography, symbolism, any content that would go beyond the visible surface of the picture or screen. The main worldview factor of such installations was the growing since the end of the XIX century. in the just born philosophy of life, the irrationalist "life" opposition to the long domination of positivistic rationality. It is precisely in the philosophical-vital irrationalist discourses - as a kind of "anthropological" correspondence of the positivist epoch and critical realism as its expression in literature and art - in the reality of the last decades of the 19th century the type of externally, i.e. socially, deterministic person, "the man of the masses", was outlined. Reason and actions of such a person relied not rooted in his "life" self and totally controlled desire to adapt to social norms and circumstances. "Vital" avant-garde "anti-sign" of art theories and styles of the early XX century. just and opposed this sociological priority of a "mass" person. However, as shown in the article, the "anti-distinguished the direction of the avant-garde from those avant-garde trends that were formed along the lines of the irrationalist opposition from the philosophy of life to the dominance of positivistic rationality. On the other hand, while the main goal of Soviet constructivism was the revolutionary modernization of the social object, L. Mohoy-Nagy, according to the author of the article, was guided by the more radical idea of overcoming, through new visual forms, the most substantial subject-object installation of European culture.

Key words: texture, thing, scheme, avant-garde art, Soviet constructivism, rationality, irrationality, philosophy of life, theory of a new vision.

References

Daulet E. ZHANAYDAROV

National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Humanities, School of History
PhD Student

«“Wings of Serf” (1926): Trade Capital as an Image of Revolutionary Cinema

The article is devoted to the formation of the image of the pre-revolutionary history of Russia on the example of Yuri Tarich's film Wings of Serf (1926). In the first post-revolutionary decade, there was a departure from previous standards in the image of national history. Authors searched for new forms of screen representations of past events. Although the film inherits the tradition of depicting the king as a murderer and tyrant, the creators – director Yuri Tarich and screenwriter Victor Shklovsky – tried to transfer on screen revolutionary understanding of history. The film is influenced by historical theory of Mikhail Pokrovsky, and Shklovsky introduced the economic element in the scenario as the main engine of the plot.
The avant-garde figures who came to cinema (Shklovsky, first of all, was a literary critic) came up with the rules of screenwriting craft on the go and challenged the boundaries of cinema's possibilities in practice. The purpose of Wings of Serf’s screenplay was to move away from the one-sided image of Ivan the Terrible and determine his actions as of economic basis. Shklovsky and Tarich developed the idea of the revolutionary remaking of the image of the past in their next work, the film version of Captain's Daughter.
The article covers the history of foreign screenings of Wings of Serf, focusing on the history of censorship bans and re-editing of the film for USA. The author shows in the article the possible influence of Wings of Serf on Ivan the Terrible by Sergei Eisenstein, which is implicitly present in both artistic and plot terms.
Despite success and foreign distribution, the movie was visually traditional, realistic, and researchers considered, most often, as the prologue before radical change of the relation to Ivan the Terrible in the thirties. The article shows how filmmakers of the first decade after the revolution used to work with historical material.

Key words: historical cinema, biographies, Ivan the Terrible, post-revolutionary cinema, historical memory, formalism, Soviet cinema, historical movies, Yury Tarich, Victor Shklovsky, visual studies, mass culture.

References

Yulia O. KHOMYAKOVA

All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK), Moscow, Russia
Research Institute of Film Art
Senior Research Fellow

"In the Minutes of Orgy Rejoicing...": the Proletkult as a Forgotten Link Between the Symbolism and the Socialist Realism

Proletkult is a cultural and educational movement founded by A.V. Lunacharsky, M.A. Bogdanov and others. From 1917 to 1932 Proletkult had a significant impact on all the art of the Soviet period. Proletkult became a kind of link between the symbolism and the socialist realism. The structure of the Proletkult resembled a party organization of more than 400 thousand people (in Russian Communist Party then there were only 300 thousand members). The basis of the educational activity of the Proletcult was the belief that new art can be created only by the proletarians, playing in the theater or writing in their spare time at work, which quickly showed its non-viability. However, many Soviet writers began their career in Proletkult studios. Theatrical performances according to the symbolist or written by Proletcult playwriters were often a kind of mystery plays about the victory of the rebels over the oppressors, the protagonist of which was the hero-Martyr who liberated the oppressed people. This belief in the absolute rightness of Marxist teachings, akin to a new religion, was generally characteristic of many figures of the socialist revolution, including the young Stalin.The basic play for proletkultist theatre was a symbolist play by Emile Verhaeren "Les aubes" ("The Dawns") written in 1898. It confirmed the mystical power of the artistic image, since its story (a revolution during the war) did embody in reality. Although Proletkult almost did not engage in film production, we should not forget the value of Proletkult for cinema. Proletkult in 1917 was ahead of the Russian Communist Party in matters of cultural policy. Before V.I. Lenin (on 18 (31) October 1917) the leaders of Proletkult declared the necessity of a new movie. Soon after the introduction of the New Economic Policy, the ideology of Proletkult reached a deadlock. The general audience preferred the popular genres and got tired of mysteries and Proletkultists. But thanks to its theater S. Eisenstein, G. Alexandrov, I. Pyrev and many others came to the cinema. The Proletkult influenced the formation of the so-called "method of socialist realism" the task of which was not so much a true and reliable description of the surrounding reality, as the formation of a new reality by means of art.

Key words: the October revolution, Lunacharsky, Proletkult, Bogdanov, theatre, poetry, mystery play, Verhaeren, "Les aubes", Eisenstein, Alexandrov, Pyriev, New Economic Policy, socialist realism.

References

Anna G. GANZHA

National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Humanities, School of Cultural Studies
Associate Professor, PhD in Philosophy

Emancipation of the Instrumental-Wind Sphere and Evolution of the Idea of «Forgotten Battles»

The Soviet cinema of the 1960s and 1970s not only presents a new view of the events of the October revolution and the Civil war, but also revolutionizes the formation of the cinema image by sound means. Some of these tools do not go beyond the global film trends — sound and music now does not enhance the visual-narrative, but acts as an independent unit, the voice of the director or the viewer, who must find inside himself, in the depths of his soul, an interpretive instance, and even he is ready to become such an instance. But in the themes of the "feat of the fathers" and "forgotten battles of the Civil war" Soviet film composers see a new unexplored opportunity to bring the voice of horn, trumpet, French horn, trombone into the fresh reinterpretations of revolutionary past. In these voices, the late Soviet man begins to hear the call of fathers and grandfathers, at the same time correlating them with the voice of his own conscience, which, paradoxically, not only does not call to repeat the previous feat, but simply "falls asleep" — the spiritual in this case merges with the "wind": dolorous sound of a trumpet and a horn only confirms the existential awareness of the impossibility of any repetition.
Since the postwar period, a hidden struggle for assigning values to the timbres of wind instruments and the right to operate with various modalities of these values begins. The article touches upon the issues of correlation of political conjuncture and aesthetic strategies, neutralizing it. We are talking about the non-obvious tools of building film narrative, using the voices of wind instruments, emancipated as a result of jazz, pop and symphonic experiments. In these processes we can distinguish two vectors: "militaristic", creating a frame of imagined space of the reconquered, and "humanistic", transforming this space into the space of dreams, the unfulfilled, the spiritual-secular. On the example of specific audiovisual solutions, the article shows the regularities of the formation of the timbre Canon of wind instruments. The emphasis is placed on the transformations of specific instruments — oboe, flute, trumpet, horn, French horn — in order to show how the potential of the influence of the instrument is distributed and the field of continuity in the film music is created.

Key words: cultural memory, Civil war, film music, wind instruments, musical semiotics, emancipation of sound, timbre, Western, Soviet cinema, late Soviet subjectivity, jazz, voice.

References

Tatiana A. SABUROVA

National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Senior Research Fellow, Professor, Doctor of Sciences in History
Visiting Professor of the Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

“Shadows disappear at noon” or “Congratulations, comrades!”: visualization of memory and forgetting of the Revolution of 1917 in the photographs of “Ogonek”

Long shadow of the past (in the words of Aleida Assmann) darken the present, affecting our views, values, behavior. Cultural memory intertwined with social memory (for example, generational memory) being both stable and dynamic, is significant for societal life as a whole. Commemoration, as a part of the politics of history, has an impact on cultural memory, bringing to life some remembrances and erasing those which might be deemed uncomfortable or even “useless” for those caught up in the politics of history. This article examines the visualization of memory and of forgetting the Revolution of 1917 in one of the most popular Soviet weekly illustrated magazines - Ogonek, applying the concepts of cultural memory and social memory to the politics of history and commemoration. Photographs played an important role in the magazine, translating and transmitting the reigning ideology but also reflecting the search for artistic methods as well as the specifics of social consciousness at the time. How were photos used in commemorations of the Revolution of 1917? What visual image of the Revolution was constructed and how did it evolve from the 1920s to the 1990s? How did the memorialization (or “mummification”) of the Revolution manifest itself in the photographs published in Ogonek, transforming the “lived” memory into a mythological and “alien” past? This article shows the visual evolution of the memory of the Revolution into an anniversary celebration by which the past was to be replaced by the “Present” and “Future” and how photography was used to eliminate the “shadows of the past”.

Key words: memory, the Revolution of 1917, photographs, commemoration, politics of history, magazine “Ogonek”.

Список литературы

Natalia G. KRIVULYA

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Higher School (Faculty) of Television
Vice-Dean of Scientific Research, Professor, Doctor of Sciences in Art History

“Music of Revolution” in Animation: Key Elements of Screen Adaptation of the poem of Alexander Blok

The article is focused on analysis of the general stylistic and semantic features of Ivan Aksenchuk’s animated feature film «Music of Revolution» based on the poem of Alexander Blok «The Twelve». The film coincided with the seventieth anniversary of the Great October socialist revolution (1987), while it was not made by the official order in the framework of public celebration of anniversary of revolution. The animated feature film on revolution was a personal initiative of the film director. The “Music of revolution” became the last film in the history of the Soviet animated cartoon among those films which had been devoted to revolution. Against the mainstream of developed in the Soviet art tradition to represent revolutionary events in a posterized style, the analyzed film demonstrates different esthetics, and different figurative method. This film seems to be ambiguous, and it has apparently the internal stylistic and dramaturgic dissonances. Actually, the literary source of the film – namely, the poem of Alexander Block – is a big difficulty for making screen versions. Ivan Aksenchuk treated the poem “The Twelve”, one of the most mysterious poems of Alexander Block which not only at the moment of the first appearance, but also throughout the all following decades had been deeply contested and had caused dozens of literary inquiries and interpretations. The filmmaker’s treatment of the poem of Alexander Block had represented for the first time the revolutionary events in animated manner in a new way: not only in relation to one of the most ambiguous literary writings devoted to revolution in the Russian literature, but also creating a new – free of traditional mythology – image of the October 1917. At the moment when the film was screened, in 1987, the country faced the new shocks comparable to revolutionary events in 1917. Addressing of the film director the poem of Alexander Block had been caused by both specifics of the historical moment, and a special «film looking» of the poem which was for the first time noticed by Yury Lotman and Boris Gasparov (as it is known, cinema of the beginning of the XXth century influenced much on structure of the poem: cinematic methods were been used by Block for creation of the «principally new language of art»). Author considers the questions of interaction between poetry and animated cartoon, and analyzes the features of the filmmaker’s interpretation of the poetic text and figural visualization of poetry.

Key words: film adaptation, animated feature film, animated cartoon, poem «The Twelve», Alеxander Blok, revolution, figurative method.

References

Victoria O. VASILEVA

National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Faculty of Humanities, School of Cultural Studies
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor

Revolution of 1917 in Post-Soviet TV-series: Deconstruction of meaning and Transformation of Narrative

There are two factors influencing on representation of revolutionary events of 1917 in the popular TV-series in the post-Soviet Russia. First, it is the negative revaluation of revolution which took place in public discussions of the 1990th when both the dominating elite, and opposition expressed equally negative relation to this event. Subsequently this position was then developed in historical policy of Vladimir Putin who, though having proclaimed the doctrine of the “total continuity” (connecting pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and democratic values), has been never hiding suspicious attitude toward the October revolution. For mass culture this meant permission to include “dark sides” of the history of revolution in popular narratives, that was impossible during the Soviet period (for example, the facts of cooperation of Bolsheviks with criminals). Secondly, the “popular cultural memory” about revolution created by means of Soviet feature films had paradoxically the contradictory character as well as initiated a number of reinterpretations of this event in post-Soviet cinema of the 1990-2010th. Soviet films represent revolution as, first of all, a civil war made for the sake of the future, for the sake of a new society and implementation of the revolutionary ideals. “Memory of revolution” in this case was consciously constructed with emphasis on its “validating” function which was necessary for legitimization of the current political situation in the Soviet state. Such films were made generally during the 1930th – 1950th. In the period of the “Thaw” some films proposed different approaches to revolution, and many of them were not permitted to screen until the 1980th. The different film versions of revolution became available for a wide audience beginning from the middle of the 1980th, when the year 1917 was represented as a changeable, illusive and ambiguous “place of memory”. In the article the character and content of TV-representations of revolution created during the post-Soviet period in the context of wider “policy of identity” are analyzed.

Key words: the year 1917, the Russian revolution, popular cultural memory, forgetting, anniversary, screen media, popular culture, Trotsky.

References

Lidiya V. KUZMINA

All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK), Moscow, Russia
Research Institute of Film Art
Senior Research Fellow

The search for new approaches to the theme of the Russian revolution: Kirill Serebrennikov's TV-series The Diary of the Murderer (2002)

The article discusses the problematic and artistic style of the TV-series The Diary of the Murderer (12 episodes, 2002), one of the best movies about the revolution in post-perestroika times. The film is analyzed in a broad cultural context: against the backdrop of a weak reflection on historical themes, on the one hand, and in connection with the emergence of the "new drama", one of the foremost trends of Russian art in the 2000s, on the other. The Diary of the Murderer is made by key authors of the "new drama", among which: director Kirill Serebrennikov, script writers Elena Gremina, Mikhail Ugarov, Alexander Rodionov. Designed for television, the film was created in the popular detective genre: in modern times in the museum of a small town they found a diary of a student of 1918 who confesses to the murders committed by him; the people who discovered the diary start an investigation and become immersed in the atmosphere of the past. The authors are innovators, expressing deep philosophical ideas and using the original artistic style in the TV-series. The interpretation of the revolution proposed in the movie reflects their time, the content of which was the crisis of the Soviet worldview. In an attempt to recreate the split picture of the world, the authors turn to the basic, mythological images and think in terms of good and evil: the revolution is a devilish game, the embodiment of which is a psychological duel between the Commissar Rosa (V.Isakova) and the student Voinov (K.Pirogov), whom she forces to shoot comrades in exchange for freedom. Embodying their large-scale thought in artistic images, the authors widely use the techniques of postmodern deconstruction, directing them on the clichés of Soviet art. Thus, Commissar Rosa, initially a classic positive hero of Soviet cinema, turns out to be an example of an embittered lumpen and the embodiment of the demonized spirit of the revolution. By making stereotypes the object of play and manipulation, the authors open behind the familiar images a different meaning, shaking established aesthetic and philosophical concepts. In general, The Diary of the Murderer conveys the mentality of the progressive artistic intelligentsia in the 1990s and 2000s, and at the same time testifies to the aesthetic search expressed in the movement from the humanistic narrative of the Soviet period to the mythological and postmodern art of the turn of the century.

Key words: «new drama», the post-Vampilov drama, historical film, modern Russian cinema, Russian revolution.

References

Nina A. TSYRKUN

All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov (VGIK), Moscow, Russia
Research Institute of Film Art
Doctor of Science in Arts History, Head of the Department of Modern Screen Art

Leftist Ideology in the Post-Soviet Russian Cinema

The article considers the trajectory of the leftist ideology as reflected in Russian cinema after the break-up of the USSR (1990s-2010s) exemplified by three the most representative films. These are: Iron Heel of Oligarchy directed by Alexandre Bashirov, The Outskirts by Pyotr Lutsik, and For Marx by Svetlana Baskova. The author assumes, that after political restructuring (perestroika) leftist ideology in Russia fell under a multiaspect period of fundamental re-interpretation, receding and reconstruction. Institutionalization under Socialist government converted it into diehard conservative scale thus destituting both avant-gardist innovative spirit and the impulse of social reformation. This evoked creative class’ negative attitude, which in turn caused a new wave of leftist criticism.
The latter trend materialized particularly in the pictures by A. Bashirov and P. Lutsik when enthusiasm tied up with optimistic hopes for immediate building of a new socially just society had thinned out and the first protocapitalistic economic crisis broke out. Bashirov’s film is a free adaptation of Jack London’s Iron Heel. The film by Lutsik is a genre mix, mostly “eastern”, with the title alluding towards the classic picture of the 1930s directed by Boris Barnet. Basing on dialogical structure of the narratives stipulated by a certain connection of these films with the original sources, the author refers them to the category of “experienced (reported) speech” cinema. According to Valentin Voloshinov and Mikhail Bakhtin, the gist of this phenomenon is as follows: to get thorough the alien in order to part from the stagnate foundational beliefs.
Svetlana Baskova’s For Marx (entitled after Louis Althusser’s renowned book) is actually the only film in contemporary Russian cinema featuring working class personages fighting for their rights. This experiment in “Neo-Soviet cinema”, a self-conscious throwback to the socialist realism of the USSR, draws in a screen version of an iconic Malevich’s Black Square thus being open for further interpretation.
The author concludes that in search of rhetorical strategy the helmers mentioned advert to both – the alien (original source, genre frame), as well as the Soviet cinema of 1920-1930s as the patterns of ideological encouraging and efficient avant-garde film language.

Key words: leftist ideology, political restructuring, experienced (reported) speech, “Neo-Soviet cinema”.

References

Oleg ARONSON

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
PhD in Philosophy, Senior Research Fellow

Michelangelo Antonioni: Reinventing the Cinematic Shot

The article raises the question of the cinematic understanding of the shot. After discussions on the connection between shot and editing in1920s and after attempts to comprehend the shot as a unit of the language of cinema in the 1960s, the current state of cinema requires a new interpretation of the frame. The author suggests to understand the cinematic shot (as opposed to frame and picture-oriented image) based on his relationship with the film as a whole. In the movies of Michelangelo Antonioni, the author finds the sources of this new understanding of the shot. Here, it ceases to be a technical cinematographic tool or an atom of the film text, but appears as something that brings together the imaginative cinematic material of the film. The article analyzes specific static shots in Antonioni's films, which seem to freeze the movement of the image and narration. Its concentrat in itself the elusive and indefinite "sense" of the film, reducing it to an elementary visual image that becomes a cinematic cliché. Such shots resist the whole range of historical interpretation of the shot - from the "letter" (the minimal non-pictorial element of the cinematographic language) to the "hieroglyph" (an image that exceeds the cultural possibilities of interpretation). Antonioni overcomes lingua centrism, which approves the cinema shot as a language unit. At the same time, the shot also loses its instrumental component and turns out to be an element of an indivisible continuum, in which the non-subjective logic of collective stereotypes, formed by cinematographic images, manifests itself. Antonioni’s cinematic style extremely weakens the editing functions of the transition from one shot to another and the function of clash of shots with each other. However he opens the possibility of considering the shot as a kind of film-in-film. Individual human perception is not enough in this situation, but such shots appeal to some collective affectivity, which capable to discover itself in the signs of cinematography.

Key words: shot, editing, montage, Antonioni, film, language of cinema, technical medium, element.

References

Irina SPIVAK

Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg, Russia, Senior Research Fellow
St.Petersburg State University, Faculty of Biology, Associate Professor
St.Petersburg State Politechnical University, Chair of Medical Physics, Associate Professor, PhD in Biology

Arina URAZOVA

Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Halle (Saale), Germany
Faculty of Medicine, Phd Student
Halle University Clinic, Researcher

Andrey ZAKHARCHUK

S.M.Kirov Military Medical Academy, St.Petersburg, Russia
Lecturer, PhD in Medical Sciences
St.Petersburg State Institution of Healthcare – Hospice No.1

Dimitri SPIVAK

D.S.Likhachev Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Russia
Head of Center for Basic Studies in the Sphere of Culture
Human Brain Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg, Russia
Principal Research Fellow, Doctor of Sciences in Philology

Perception of Traditional / Non-traditional Music and its Influence upon Life Expectancy: Preliminary Report.

Article 2: Telomerase Activity

The paper presents preliminary results of an interdisciplinary research project dedicated to psychological aspects of perception of traditional / non-traditional music, and its molecular biological correlates. 65 normal, Russian-speaking, young subjects were observed prior to passing a two-week music course of a definite type, 1.5 hours a day, and right after it. They were divided into three subgroups, one of which passed a course of light classical music, which was quite traditional for them, another one listened to non-traditional, designer music, sharply different from the former one in key and timbre. The third subgroup, which listened to sounds of nature, served for the means of control. 6 psychological questionnaires were applied, providing assessment of levels of mood and neuroticization, degrees of activation of basic psychological defense mechanisms and strategies of coping with stress, and of such hidden human reserves as temporary activation of intrinsic religious attitudes, and short-term alteration of consciousness. Molecular biological correlates were regarded on the level of telomere length and telomerase activity, which served as stress markers and predictors of life expectancy. For the purpose of the present, pilot study, both molecular biological indices were scaled, using the thresholds of ±30 basic pairs for telomere length, and of ±10% conventional units for telomerase activation. Shifting inside these intervals was regarded as statistically insignificant. Shifting outside these intervals, as a result of passing a music course of a given type, was regarded as statistically significant, and as either an increase or, a decrease, depending on the direction of alteration. Thus any of the 3 ways of alteration of telomere length could be combined with any of the 3 ways of alteration of telomerase activity, in the case of any of the 3 subgroups of subjects. Thus 3x3 (that is, 9) strategies of alteration of telomere length and telomerase activity were regarded in the case of each subgroup of subjects. As a result, two dominating strategies of alteration of molecular biological indices, depending on the type of music course, were revealed. The first one, occurring in the case of the course of traditional music, consisted in increase of telomere length, which was often, but not necessarily, accompanied by increase in telomerase activity. The second strategy comprised sharp increase of telomerase activation, which was not accompanied by increase of telomere length. Basing on literary data, the former strategy was interpreted as related to stress reduction and rise of life expectancy. The latter one consisted in activation of telomerase, allowing to protect telomere length, as means of coping with stress. Basing on these results, revision of such controversial issues as Mozart effect, is proposed.

Key words: Perception of music, cultural heritage, telomerase activity, telomere length, stress reduction, life expectancy.

Research

Nina SOSNA

Instutute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia
PhD in Philosophy, Senior Research Fellow

Post-Observer «Techniques of Vision»

The article focuses on problematic of vision in the circumstances of the growing impact of media and technology. Discussing, on the one hand, the separation from the phenomenological approach to vision and visible, based on such categories as image, imagination, which were endowed with fundamental importance and did not use the category of technical, and on the other hand, the classical studies of certain visual dispositives, such as J. Crary's, it advances to the theories, considering the so-called "media convergence" (Miller, H. Jenkins), which try to justify the specific character of new visual objects on the ground of their complexity and multilevel nature of the media themselves. The author comes then to the problems of the role of the visual in science and technology studies (STS), which at first glance seems to put visuality behind the brackets of consideration. However, the conclusion is that these latter also use the category of visible but transformed. Some terms are also proposed to describe these processes.

Key words: visual, media, diffraction, entanglement, science and technology studies, contemporary art.

References