Companion to Russian Cinema

Birgit Beumers is Professor of Film Studies at Aberystwyth University (UK). She specialises in Russian culture, especially cinema and theatre. Her most recent publications include A History of Russian Cinema (2009) and Performing Violence (with Mark Lipovetsky, 2009); she has edited Directory of World Cinema: Russia (2010; 2014), The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (with N. Condee, 2011), Russia’s New Fin de Siècle (2013), and Cinema in Central Asia: Rewriting Cultural Histories (with M. Rouland and G. Abikeyeva, 2013). She is editor of KinoKultura and of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.

"This is a highly interesting and thought-provoking work on a subject that many of us know only too little. The former USSR has a long history and has produced leading names from the cinematic arts and technology. This is a book that sheds light on a previously darkened field and deserves to be read by all of those interested in film making. It will be a stimulating work for students of cinema and the cinematic arts and technology and will provoke much discussion."—Eric Jukes, Reference Reviews, Volume 31, Number 4, 2017

• Notes on Contributors viiiAcknowledgments xvNotes on Transliteration and References xviIntroduction 1Birgit BeumersPart I Structures of Production, Formation, and Exhibition 211 The Film Palaces of Nevsky Prospect: A History of St Petersburg’s Cinemas, 1900–1910 23Anna Kovalova2 (V)GIK and the History of Film Education in the Soviet Union, 1920s–1930s 45Masha Salazkina3 Lenfilm: The Birth and Death of an Institutional Aesthetic 66Robert Bird4 The Adventures of the Kulturfilm in Soviet Russia 92Oksana Sarkisova5 Soiuzdetfilm: The Birth of Soviet Children’s Film and the Child Actor 117Jeremy HicksPart II For the State or For the Audience? Auteurism, Genre, and Global Markets 1376 The Stalinist Musical: Socialist Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism 139Richard Taylor7 Soviet Film Comedy of the 1950s and 1960s: Innovation and Restoration 158Seth Graham8 Auteur Cinema during the Thaw and Stagnation 178Eugénie Zvonkine9 The Blokbaster: How Russian Cinema Learned to Love Hollywood 202Dawn Seckler and Stephen M. Norris10 The Global and the National in Post]Soviet Russian Cinema (2004–2012) 224Maria Bezenkova and Xenia LeontyevaPart III Sound – Image – Text 24911 The Literary Scenario and the Soviet Screenwriting Tradition 251Maria Belodubrovskaya12 Ideology, Technology, Aesthetics: Early Experiments in Soviet Color Film, 1931–1945 270Phil Cavendish13 Learning to Speak Soviet: Soviet Cinema and the Coming of Sound 292Lilya Kaganovsky14 Cinema and the Art of Being: Towards a History of Early Soviet Set Design 314Emma Widdis15 Stars on Screen and Red Carpet 337Djurdja Bartlett16 Revenge of the Cameramen: Soviet Cinematographers in the Director’s Chair 364Peter RollbergPart IV Time and Space, History and Place 38917 Soldiers, Sailors, and Commissars: The Revolutionary Hero in Soviet Cinema of the 1930s 391Denise J. Youngblood18 Defending the Motherland: The Soviet and Russian War Film 409Stephen M. Norris19 Shooting Location: Riga 427Kevin M. F. Platt20 Capital Images: Moscow on Screen 452Birgit BeumersPart V Directors’ Portraits 47521 Boris Barnet: “This doubly accursed cinema” 477Julian Graffy22 Iulii Raizman: Private Lives and Intimacy under Communism 500Jamie Miller23 The Man Who Made Them Laugh: Leonid Gaidai, the King of Soviet Comedy 519Elena Prokhorova24 Aleksei Gherman: The Last Soviet Auteur 543Anthony Anemone25 Knowledge (Imperfective): Andrei Zviagintsev and Contemporary Cinema 565Nancy CondeeAppendix Chronology of Events in Russian Cinema and History 585Bibliography 614Index 631