Welcome to issue 85 of our journal the editors December 2017 Editorial Hello and welcome to Issue 85 of Senses of Cinema. Tying in with the centenary of the fall of the Romanov dynasty in Russia and the ensuing October revolution, the centrepiece of this issue is our blockbuster d...
World Poll 2017: Introduction the editors January 2018 World Poll Our favourite time of year has rolled around again: the publication of the results from the Senses of Cinema World Poll. It’s always so gratifying to look at the incredible array of writers who contribute to th...
World Poll 2017 – Part 1 the editors January 2018 World Poll ENTRIES IN PART 1: AFI Research Collection Antti Alanen Francisco Algarín Navarro Juan Carlos Ampie Michael J. Anderson Rowena Santos Aquino Sean Axmaker Martyn Bamber Mike Bartlett Nick Bartlett R...
World Poll 2017 – Part 2 the editors January 2018 World Poll ENTRIES IN PART 2: Thomas Caldwell Michael Campi Nicolas Carrasco Michael J. Casey Celluloid Liberation Front Daryl Chin Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn Roberta Ciabarra Joel Condemi Adam Cook Jordan Cro...
World Poll 2017 – Part 3 the editors January 2018 World Poll ENTRIES IN PART 3: William Edwards Jeremy Elphick John K. Emelianoff Kaya Erdinc Eliú Escamilla Adalberto Fonkén Gwendolyn Audrey Foster Mark Freeman Hugo Gamarra E. Sachin Gandhi Stephen Gaunson ...
World Poll 2017 – Part 4 the editors January 2018 World Poll ENTRIES IN PART 4: Daniel Kasman Christopher Kearney Ricardo Köhler Ehsan Khoshbakht Rainer Knepperges Adam Kuntavanish Eugenia Lai Elaine Lennon Raúl Liébana Liébana Kimberly Lindbergs Tara Loma...
World Poll 2017 – Part 5 the editors January 2018 World Poll ENTRIES IN PART 5: Peter Nagels Thomas John Nudi Nicholas Page Andreea Pătru Yoana Pavlova Jesse Percival Antoni Peris-Grao Ashley Perry Andréa Picard Fidel Jesús Quirós Paulette Reynolds Stua...
World Poll 2017 – Part 6 the editors January 2018 World Poll ENTRIES IN PART 6: Maria San Filippo José Sarmiento Hinojosa Howard Schuman Christopher Sikich Matthew Singleton Christopher Small Mark Spratt Brad Stevens Josh Timmermann Gorazd Trušnovec Matt Tur...
“I Love Vulnerability”: An Interview with Tab Hunter Andrew J. Rausch December 2017 Feature Articles A 2003 New York Times article described 1950s matinee idol Tab Hunter as having “Malibu beach boy looks”, and that description is apt. Even today, wel...
Ouroboros and the Cycle of Violence: An Interview with Basma Alsharif Justine Smith December 2017 Feature Articles Ouroboros (2017), the feature debut of visual artist Basma Alsharif, begins with an extended drone shot from the ocean through Gaza that plays in reve...
Haptically Revisiting Agnès Varda’s Jacquot de Nantes Andrew Northrop December 2017 Feature Articles Drawing on Agnès Varda’s practice of engaging characters dialectically with their environments, I intend to explore how Jacquot de Nantes (1991) and T...
“Women’s Stories Aren’t Told in Laos”: An Interview with Mattie Do Emma Westwood December 2017 Feature Articles When examining great moments in film history, Laos very rarely – if ever – rates a mention. Even though this South East Asian nation found its place v...
The Touch: Bergman’s forgotten masterpiece Gerard Corvin December 2017 Feature Articles Ingmar Bergman died ten years ago in July. At the time, it felt like the passing of a whole era of filmmaking. In its front page devoted to the “Maste...
Phantoms Came to Meet: Guy Maddin’s Seances as Surrealist History of Cinema Andrei Kartashov December 2017 Feature Articles “It is your only chance to see this film”: the opening phrase of Seances is one whose meaning is now all but forgotten. Seances, a video work by Guy M...
Le Goût du crime: Notes on Gangster Style in New-Wave Paris: Part I Murray Pomerance December 2017 Feature Articles In this, the first instalment of a two-part article, Canadian film scholar and regular Senses of Cinema contributor Murray Pomerance presents his thou...
Stopping up the Works: Weir’s The Plumber and Social Class Conflict William “Bill” Blick November 2017 Feature Articles Good plumbing seems to be essential for a happy life or at least as the film, The Plumber (1979), suggests with ironic wit. This film may be seen as p...
Korean Cinema in Winter: The 22nd Busan International Film Festival Marc Raymond December 2017 Festival Reports Because of an extended national vacation of ten days in early October due to the unusual convergence of various holidays (most notably Chuseok, the Ko...
In a Year of European Documentary Film Festivals Carmen Gray December 2017 Festival Reports Hearing critics talk about European documentary festivals you could often be fooled for thinking they start and end with Amsterdam’s IDFA and its sexi...
New York Film Festival 2017: Robert Mitchum Retrospective + Main Slate Jackson Arn December 2017 Festival Reports To watch the films of Robert Mitchum – the Golden Age Hollywood star whose 54-year career was the subject of a major retrospective at the New York Fil...
A City of Cinema Perseveres: The 15th Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Joel Neville Anderson December 2017 Festival Reports Shortly after the conclusion of the 15th edition of the biennial Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, the UNESCO Creative Cities Network ...
Wavelengths at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival Darren Hughes December 2017 Festival Reports My conversations during the first two days of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival were dominated by two subjects: Twin Peaks: The Return, whi...
Reimagining Reality: 61st BFI London Film Festival Tara Judah December 2017 Festival Reports I was born in London, but I grew up in Australia. To my eyes, the people of London move with direction and urgency, as if the city somehow has the stu...
Between the Breaths: The 2017 Adelaide Film Festival Saige Walton December 2017 Festival Reports Paying homage to the birth year of punk rock as well as the persistence of a rebellious sensibility in the contemporary, the Adelaide Film Festival st...
Dissent and Its Discontents: Five Decades of RAF in German Film and Television at the moving history Film Festival Marco Abel December 2017 Festival Reports 6 September 1977. I was not yet eight years old. Helicopters in the air; police cars everywhere. On the way to school, the display of the box with the...
Finding the National Within the International: TIFF Revives a National Film Festival Petro Alexiou December 2017 Festival Reports The Thessaloniki International Film Festival (TIFF) is a vibrant festival that attracts new and emerging directors from all over the world. With close...
A Queer Tale of Two Sister Cities, 100 Years and the First FIPRESCI Colloquium Dedicated to Russian Cinema Cerise Howard December 2017 Festival Reports The First FIPRESCI Colloquium Dedicated to Russian Cinema 13-15 November 2017 Lenfilm Studio, St. Petersburg Colloquium website: https://new.cultur...
Vancouver International Film Festival Josh Cabrita December 2017 Festival Reports It is always in the process of being made. It is never finished; never closed. Perhaps we can imagine space as a simultaneity of stories-so far. – ...
Eisenstein, Sergei Julia Vassilieva December 2017 Great Directors January 23,1898, Riga, Latvia d. February 11, 1948, Moscow, USSR Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) is known to film history as a “revolutionary Russian ...
Ophuls, Max Jeremy Carr December 2017 Great Directors 6 May, 1902, Saarbrücken, Germany d. 26 March, 1957, Hamburg, Germany Like the elaborate camera manoeuvres that enrich his multinational filmography...
Anderson, Lindsay Luke Aspell December 2017 Great Directors b. 17 April 1923, Bangalore, India. d. 30 August 1994, Angoulême, Charente, France. “If you enjoy L’Eternel Retour, you may enjoy also King Kong, ...
Defining the Cinematic Essay: The Essay Film by Elizabeth A. Papazian & Caroline Eades, and Essays on the Essay Film by Nora M. Alter & Timothy Corrigan Katherine Balsley December 2017 Book Reviews From 2011 until 2015, I taught a course entitled “Documentary Production” at a small liberal arts college north of Chicago. Rather than basing the ...
Ici et ailleurs: Decentring France by Gemma King James Waters December 2017 Book Reviews “Cinema is the art of ghosts, the battle of phantoms. That’s what I think cinema is about, when it’s not boring. It’s the art of allowing ghosts to co...
The Toad and the Insect: On Mark Bartholomew’s Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing Nafis Shafizadeh December 2017 Book Reviews Several years ago, my wife and I spent a fall week in a remote cabin in the hills of Big Sur. We spent the time mostly enjoying the seclusion of the c...
The Railroad Man: Hollywood’s First Australian. The Adventurous Life of J.P. McGowan by John J. McGowan Geoff Mayer December 2017 Book Reviews In 1918 Australian born actor, writer, producer and director J.P. (Jack) McGowan joined Universal, starting a collaboration that lasted nearly fou...
The Obsolescence of Poetics: Film History as Media Archaeology: Tracking Digital Cinema by Thomas Elsaesser Daniel Fairfax December 2017 Book Reviews Should a space alien come down to Earth and ask for guidance on the state of film and media studies, I could hardly think of better advice for this in...
Support Senses of Cinema – join our Patreon community the editors October 2017 News If you're here, it's because you are already a great supporter of Senses of Cinema and you'd like to know how to contribute more - thank you! Senses of Cinema has recently joined the Patreon fundraising plat...
Affectively Trapped, Fossilised and Fetishised: Early 1990s Melbourne through Stillness, Movement and Music in Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1991) Diana Sandars December 2017 Screening Melbourne In Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse 1991), the photographs of blind central protagonist, Martin, construct multiple Melbournes. Martin’s compulsive photograph...
Leaving Home: Kennedy Miller in Melbourne James Robert Douglas December 2017 Screening Melbourne Kennedy Miller has been located in Sydney since the early 1980s, when its reputation as Australia’s most successful production house was established. ...
Before On the Beach: Melbourne on Film in the 1950s Adrian Danks December 2017 Screening Melbourne “City images are historical creations, and are often more resistant to change than the modernisers anticipate, although the resistance may be strong...
Melbourne’s Capitol Theatre: “The Best Cinema That Has Ever Been Built or Is Ever Likely to Be Built” Lisa French December 2017 Screening Melbourne This article charts the commission given to architects Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin; the cultural as well as national significance ...
Introduction: Screening Melbourne Sean Redmond and Glen Donnar December 2017 Screening Melbourne In the Melbourne City Animal Kingdom feels like a suburban Melbourne version of The Godfather to me. It's epic and Shakespearean in its story, and ...
Uncanny Suburbia, Hauntology and Post-Traumatic Poetics: Conversations with Dirk de Bruyn’s Conversations With My Mother (1990). Glenn D'Cruz November 2017 Screening Melbourne This reflective essay stages a conversation with Dirk de Bruyn’s autobiographical film, Conversations with my Mother’ (1990) in order to foreground th...
Screenwriting Melbourne/s: The Challenges of Re-presenting and Re-creating Melbourne Within a Screenplay’s Flipped-Reality Narrative Stayci Taylor November 2017 Screening Melbourne This article argues that establishing the screen city begins with the script, and the author makes a case study of her own screenplay, set in an alter...
Sonic Disturbance and Chromatic Dissolution: The Cantrills remake Melbourne Tessa Laird November 2017 Screening Melbourne This paper examines the work of Australian experimental film legends, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, who, over a fifty-year period, perfected a range of...
1926: Stride, Soviet! (Dziga Vertov) Barbara Wurm December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema From the Old to the New: Stride, Soviet! (Dziga Vertov 1926) Ҥ68 2000 Meters in the Land of the Bolsheviks РA Kinoglaz effort about the work of ...
2006: Blockade (Sergei Loznitsa) Tatiana Efremova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Speechless but not Silent: Blockade (Sergei Loznitsa, 2006) Is it possible to tell the story of a besieged city without the trace of an epic? Can one...
1998: Khrustalyov, My Car! (Aleksei German) Greg Dolgopolov December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema One of the most disturbing Russian films of all time, Khrustalyov, mashuni (Khrustalyov, My Car!, 1998) provides the audience with a firsthand experie...
2003: Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov) Pasquale Iannone December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Russian Ark/Russkiy kovcheg (2002 Russia 99 mins) Prod Co: Egoli Tossell Film/For a Film/The Hermitage Bridge Studio Prod: Andrei Deryabin, Jen...
1971: Trial of the Road (Aleksei German) Pasquale Iannone December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema In her 2007 study of the Russian war film, Denise J. Youngblood argues that while Soviet society was in a state of stagnation in the 1970s, the Soviet...
1989: The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova) Evgeny Gusyatinskiy December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Released in 1989, Kira Muratova’s The Asthenic Syndrome immediately became a sensation and still remains one of the most groundbreaking films of the l...
1985: Come and See (Elem Klimov) Adrian Danks December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Come and See (1985 Soviet Union 142 mins) Source: AFTRS Prod, Dir: Elem Klimov Scr: Klimov and Ales Adamovich Phot: Alexei Rodionov Mus: O. Yan...
1972: Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky) Acquarello December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Solaris (1972, USSR, 165 mins) Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky; Writer: Andrei Tarkovsky and Friedrich Gorenstein; Cinematography: Vadim Iusov; Editor: Serge...
1975: Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky) Sam Ishii-Gonzales December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) directed seven feature films over a 24-year period. Zerkalo (Mirror), released in 1975, comes at the midway point in his ...
1962: Ivan’s Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky) Fergus Daly and Katherine Waugh December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Ivan's Childhood (1962 USSR 97mins) Source: Film Alliance Prod Co: Mosfilm Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky Scr: Vladimir Bogomolov, Michael Papava from the s...
1966: Andrei Roublev (Andrei Tarkovsky) Hamish Ford December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic film about Andrei Roublev, Russia’s most famous icon painter, is a remarkable, deeply reflexive examination of the artist’s ro...
1969: The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov) Rahul Hamid December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Floundering for some way to describe obtuse or complex art, critics often rely on the adjective “poetic”. It can come to mean nearly anything in this ...
1959: Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukhrai) Julia Levin December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Ballad of a Soldier (1959 Soviet Union 89 mins) Source: ACMI/NLA Prod Co: Mosfilm Prod: M. Chernova Dir: Grigori Chukhrai Scr: Grigori Chukhrai...
1944: Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II (Sergei Eisenstein) Andrew Grossman December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema By the time Sergei Eisenstein completed Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible Part I) in 1944, the widespread experimentalism that had characterised the Sov...
1930: Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko) Adam Bingham December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Earth/Zemlya (1930 USSR 83 mins) Source: NLA/ACMI Prod Co: Wufku Dir, Scr, Ed: Alexander Dovzhenko Phot: Daniil Demutsky Art Dir: Visili Kriche...
1938: Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein) Greg Dolgopolov December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Aleksandr Nevskiy (Alexander Nevsky) is not central to Eisenstein’s theory of montage and is not considered to be one of his most important works, at ...
1929: Arsenal (Alexander Dovzhenko) Miguel Marías December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Arsenal (1929 USSR 93 mins) Source: ACMI/NLA Prod Co: VUFKU Prod, Dir, Scr, Ed: Alexander Dovzhenko Phot: Daniil Demutsky Art Dir: Vadim Myulle...
1928: The House on Trubnaya (Boris Barnet) Greg Dolgopolov December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Boris Barnet’s Dom na Trubnoi, Mezhrabpom-Rus (The House on Trubnaya, 1928) is a masterpiece of Soviet silent cinema. It is a delightful comedy of man...
1927: The Girl with the Hatbox (Boris Barnet) Shari Kizirian December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema The first solo effort by Boris Barnet, Devushka s korobkoy (The Girl with the Hatbox) opened during a pinnacle year for silent cinema. Called “annus m...
1927: October (Sergei Eisenstein) Shari Kizirian December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema In 1926, the October Revolution Jubilee Committee pulled Sergei Eisenstein, Grigorii Aleksandrov, and cameraman Eduard Tisse away from Generalnaia Lin...
1924: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov) Tony Williams December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Long recognised as the pioneer of the “Kuleshov effect”, teacher of future cinematic talents such as Sergei Eisenstein (who attended Kuleshov’s Fi...
1962: Ilich’s Gate and 1965: I Am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiev) Viktoria Paranyuk December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema A Portrait of an Era: Ilich’s Gate and I Am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiev, 1962 and 1965) At a March 1963 meeting with the creative intelligentsia, Nikita ...
1984: The Legend of Suram Fortress (Sergei Parajanov) Olga Kim December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Nesting Figures of the Past: The Legend of Suram Fortress (Sergei Parajanov, 1984) The Georgian legend about a youth bricked up alive in the wall of ...
1988: Little Vera (Vasily Pichul) Daria Ezerova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema “A Bomb into the Lap of Mother Russia”: Little Vera (Vasiliy Pichul, 1988) In May 1989, an issue of the American magazine Playboy caused a furore in ...
1932: Komsomol: Leader of Electrification (Esfir Shub) Natalie Ryabchikova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Speaking in the Voice of the Workers: Komsomol: Leader of Electrification (Esfir Shub, 1932) Esfir Shub is known primarily for her “found footage” fi...
1925: The Death Ray (Lev Kuleshov) Natalie Ryabchikova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema A Cinephile in the Land of the Bolsheviks: The Death Ray (Lev Kuleshov, 1925) Lev Kuleshov’s Luch smerti (The Death Ray, 1925) is wedged between the ...
1976: The Irony of Fate, or I Hope You Have a Nice Bath! (Eldar Riazanov) Masha Shpolberg December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema A Soviet Fairy Tale: Ironiya sudby, ili S legkim parom! (The Irony of Fate, or I Hope You Have a Nice Bath!, Eldar Riazanov, 1976) Canon formation te...
1924: Strike (Sergei Eisenstein) Natalie Ryabchikova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema The Master’s Debut: Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1924) As Eisenstein himself described it years later, Stachka (Strike, 1924) had been “Awkward. Angula...
2007: Cargo 200 (Aleksei Balabanov) Jeremi Szaniawski December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Balabanov’s Law: Cargo 200 (Aleksei Balabanov, 2007) Throughout his short but prolific career, Aleksei Balabanov (1959-2013) produced an oeuvre – mos...
1929: The Old and the New (Sergei Eisenstein) Julia Vassilieva December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Historical Rapture: The Old and the New (Sergei Eisenstein, 1929) Sergei Eisenstein’s fourth silent feature, General Line, which was released under t...
2014: Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev) Julia Vassilieva December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema The Excesses of Power: Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014) Heralded as Russia's greatest cinematic accomplishment in recent years, Andrey Zvyagintse...
1997: Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov) Jeremi Szaniawski December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Before Empire Come: Mother and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1997) The story of a mother slowly dying while in the care of her son, Mat i syn (Mother and S...
1929: Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov) Shari Kizirian December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema From Failed Propaganda to Timeless Masterpiece: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) In 1927 while Soviet cinema was celebrating the tenth an...
1964: Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev) Daniel Fairfax December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Adapting the Cinema to Shakespeare: Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, 1964) It is perhaps a measure of the state of Soviet film culture in the Khrushchev er...
2013: Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German) Lukas Brasiskis December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Hope in Despair, and Beauty in Revulsion: Trudno byt bogom (Aleksei German, 2013) Labeled as one of the biggest perfectionists among his peers, Russi...
1950: The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaurelli) Brad Weismann December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Autocrat as Messiah: The Fall of Berlin Padenie Berlina (The Fall of Berlin, Mikheil Chiaurelli, 1950) is the epitome of the politically correct fil...
1960: Letter Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatozov) Brad Weismann December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema A Subversive Affirmation: Letter Never Sent Neotpravlennoe pismo (Letter Never Sent, Mikhail Kalatozov, 1960) is a curious document that bears a lot...
1957: The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov) Masha Shpolberg December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Humanising the Soviet Subject: Letiat zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying) When Letiat zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying) was released in late 1957, it cam...
1929: The New Babylon (Grigori Kozinstev and Leonid Trauberg) Michael Cramer December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema “We’ll Come Back to Paris!”: The New Babylon Novyy Vavilon (The New Babylon, 1929) is the fifth feature film produced by the FEKS (“Factory of the E...
1979: Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky) Brad Weismann December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema I could go on and on about Tarkovsky. Thousands have. Some directors seem made for critical fodder. Hitchcock, Welles, Ford, Kurosawa, and others ...
1926: One Sixth of the World (Dziga Vertov) Josh Alvizu December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema This Land Belongs to You and Me: One Sixth of the World (Dziga Vertov, 1926) The year 1926 was the starting point for a two-year period that would ma...
1933: The Deserter (Vsevolod Pudovkin) Tadas Bugnevicius December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema International Melancholia: The Deserter To the trio of Pudovkin’s films considered his best – Мat (Mother, 1926), Konets Sankt-Peterburga (The End of...
1930: Salt for Svanetia (Mikhail Kalatozov) Natalie Ryabchikova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Ethnography vs. Modernisation: Salt for Svanetia (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1930) The first independent film by the future master of Letiat zhuravli (The Cr...
1965: Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures (Leonid Gayday) Andrey Tolstoy December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema The People’s Secret Speech: Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures, 1965 Of the twenty highest-grossing films in the history of the Soviet box off...
1977: The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko) Barbora Bartunkova December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Facing Death, Confronting Human Nature: The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko, 1977) Larisa Shepitko’s black-and-white feature film Voskhozhdeniye (The Ascent,...
1928: Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin) John Mackay December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Fetishism and Revolution: Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928) The Mezhrabpomfilm production Storm over Asia (1928; sound version made in 1949) ...
100 Years of Soviet Cinema: Introduction Daniel Fairfax December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema There is a provocative dimension, perhaps, in the title of this dossier: one hundred years of Soviet cinema? How is this possible, if the USSR itself,...
1997: Brother (Aleksei Balabanov) John Mackay December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Cinema as Salvage Operation: Brother (Aleksei Balabanov, 1997) One of the “accursed questions” of Russian cinema, at least from the early Soviet peri...
1969: We (Artavazd Peleshian) Paul Macovaz December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Negentropic Montage: We (Artavazd Peleshian, 1969) “The crowd grips the land with its polycephalic claws. A façade of watchers sees across time into...
1927: The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Esfir Shub) Anastasia Kostina December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Compiling History for Masses: The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty In August 1926, Sovkino, the Soviet state body in control of cinema production, commiss...
1966: A Long Happy Life (Gennady Shpalikov) Alena Lodkina December 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Dangerous Lyrical: A Long Happy Life (Gennady Shpalikov, 1966) Not much really happened: a man and a woman met by chance on a bus heading to a regula...
1962: The Wild Swans (Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Vera Tsekhanovskaya) Mihaela Mihailova November 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Avant-Garde Animation in the Shadow of Disney: The Wild Swans (Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Vera Tsekhanovskaya, 1962) In the West, Mikhail Tsekhanovsky ...
1924: Aelita: Queen of Mars (Yakov Protazanov) Lisa K. Broad November 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Yakov Protazanov’s 1924 film, Aelita, begins in December of 1921 with the worldwide transmission of a cryptic message. An iris revealing a set of powe...
1925: Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein) Helen Grace November 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925, USSR, 75 mins) Dir: Sergei Eisenstein; Writer: Sergei Eisenstein and Nina Agadzhanova Shutko;...
1926: Mother (Vsevolod Pudovkin) Cara Marisa Deleon November 2017 100 Years of Soviet Cinema This article examines Pudovkin’s 1926 silent classic in regard to the central image of mother in both Soviet ideology and Russian society of the time.
