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IN THE REALM OF CULTURE Hans-Joachim SCHLEGEL. The icon and the film image. Traces of the Byzantine conception of representation in Russian and Soviet cinema. (Translated by Anna Frizen) The relationship between the icon and the cinematic image is not a question of content, symbolism or analogy. First of all it is a structural phenomenon, a vaguely felt distinction between the «Eastern» and the «Western» cultures, including cinema cultures. During the Soviet period Orthodox traditions and structures were distorted through the whole «superstructure», resulting in the formation of an antireligious pseudo-religion. During a century-long tragic ecclesiastic (and at the same time political) struggle the rift between the East and the West deepened. This confrontation resulted in fundamentally different «content» preferences that were manifest also in the compositions and imagery of even the most loyal Soviet writers, artists and directors. Nevertheless, religious mechanisms functioning in culture resisted ideological transformations. The author attempts to gauge the importance of Orthodox imagery and rituals in the poetics of such different artists as Eisenstein and Tarkovsky Keywords: Pavel Florenskiy, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Andrei Tarkovsky, image in cinema, religion and cinema, icons in cinema SOURCES AND PARALLELS Ana OLENINA. Scores of movement: Lev Kuleshov’s views on the actor’s psychology The essay proceeds from the assumption that Kuleshov’s training of cinema actors in the early 1920s stands at an intersection between classical stage traditions of codified gesture and more recent developments in the domains of psychophysiology, reflexology, and labor efficiency training. The article compares techniques for registering and controlling movement developed in these fields with methods used by Kuleshov, revealing political and economic forces, as well as discursive practices that compelled the director to draw on scientific sources. Keywords: Lev Kuleshov, actor as «model», film avant-garde of the 1920s, gesture in art, calisthenics, Proletkult, NOT theories Maya TUROVSKAYA. Hollywood in Moscow, or Soviet and American cinema of the 1930s–1940s. Comparing the film corpus of the Stalin period to Hollywood has become a truism. It is true that «the great Soviet cinema» of the post-avant-garde era possessed the essential characteristics of cinema classics. However, Soviet cinema didn’t have a lot of qualities that had made Hollywood cinema the model of cinema classics as well as the box-office champion. Soviet cinema has remained «Hollywood-for-itself». Yet, even this truism has had to be salvaged first from the weight of Soviet ideology («we are the avant-garde of the planet») and then from the anti-Soviet myth of the Soviet uniqueness. Moreover, in the experience of an ordinary Russian viewer the Hollywood «Golden Age» has remained a «blind spot». Nowadays, the term «great Soviet cinema» is not that clear either…The author continues a series of comparative studies of the Soviet cinema’s sociological and cultural models and of the distribution politics of USSR and USA. The focus of the present article lies in the attempt to extrapolate American experience into the Soviet film industry of the 1930s as well as in the discussion of similarities between classical Soviet and American films and the «film trophy» phenomenon. Keywords: cinema and politics, ideology and art, Boris Shumyatsky, Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Joseph Stalin and cinema, cinema distribution in the 1940s, Soyuzintorgkino, classical Hollywood cinema EXPLORATION Rom / Room. (Irina Grashchenkova) Natalia SAMOKHVALOVA. «A de facto student in the medical department» In the State archive of the Saratov region there is a personal record for the student A. M. Rom (the second «o» will appear in his name later). This record from the fund of the University of Saratov has never before attracted attention of art historians and biographers of the famous film director. However the information contained there poses new questions. For instance there is a discrepancy with the later autobiographical assertions of Abram Room about his two years of study in the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute. The text traces the story of Room’s appearance in Saratov told with the help of the surviving documents. Elena SAVELYEVA. VGMTI in Saratov (1920–1923) The second article in this section is devoted to Saratov’s Higher State Studio of Theater Arts (Vyshie gosudarstvennye masterskie teatral’nogo iskusstva, VGMTI). The studio was a noticeable presence in the diverse theater and art life of Saratov in the 1920s. From the beginning till the end the Studio was headed by its founder Abram Room. Keywords: Abram Room, theater of the 1920s EXPERIENCE Tomas GALA. Marlen Khutsiev: the Czech reception, 1955–1970. (Translated by Viktoriya Levitova) Marlen Khutsiev’s oeuvre represents a symbol of a particular era. The Czech artistic community learnt about the Soviet «Thaw» not only from mass media and everyday life, but also though art, including films. These films’ characters were not the idealized and enthusiastic builders of the new epoch from posters and placards, their figures had become more down-to-earth and complex. Khutsiev showed contemporary people and posed relevant problems in his films. This made him interesting for Czech artists and inspired them. The Czech specialized and popular press was the main source of information about Khutsiev and his films in this period, and the author uses it to show the director’s influence on the Czech film production of the time. Keywords: Marlen Khutsiev, Soviet new cinema of the 1960s, The Ilyich Gate (Zastava Ilyicha) DOCUMENTS AND COMMENTARY Wolfgang BEILENHOFF, Sabine HÄNSGEN. Mirror reflections. (Translated by Anna Frizen) Maya TUROVSKAYA. Several documents from the life of a documentary. Rolf AURICH. The Reich film archive: archive with a post-history. (Translated by Anna Frizen) The road of «Ordinary Fascism» to Russian film-viewers was difficult and winding. But the road of the eponymous photo-album to them was even more long and complicated. Its layout sheet, ready for publication, was «put on the shelf» in 1966 and was published only 40 years later by the «Séance» publishing house. However, Maya Turovskaya, one of the film’s scriptwriters, feels certain that the book on everyday fascism appeared in the right place at the right time. Even before that a publication about Romm’s film was initiated by the University of Cologne. German colleagues, who did not know then about the existence of the unpublished book, approached Maya Turovskaya with the project «Ordinary Fascism and Mass Media». Therefore, «Séance»’s attempts to publish the book coincided with the initiative of their German colleagues and three years after the Russian edition a book «Gewöhnliche Faschismus. Ein Werkbuch zum Film Michail Romm» was published in Berlin. It was compiled and edited by Wolfgang Beilenhoff and Sabine Hänsgen in collaboration with Maya Turovskaya. And it included not only the photo-text of the 1966’s book, but also a number of original articles and publications. We publish two of them, accompanied by Maya Turovskaya’s account of the bureaucratic absurd that erupted around the Leipzig premiere of the film. Keywords: Mikhail Romm, film distribution of the 1960s, distribution censorship in the GDR, history of film archives, Reich film archive IN MEMORIAM Lev ROSHAL’ (1936–2010) THEORY Larisa BEREZOVCHUK. The cinema spectacle (towards the meaning of the term) The term «spectacle» is still frowned upon in the field of film studies. In criticism, and even more so in theoretical works entertainment films, films-spectacles are almost a priori opposed to cinema as «high» art. Is there any rationale behind this opposition? And if there is, what are the reasons for using the term «spectacle» as something derogative? Spectacles had been a part of human culture thousands of years before cinema was invented. If cinema has taken up this ancient tradition, it is pertinent to ask what qualities and characteristics of cinema answer this atavistic need of man—a social animal—in spectacle. The author concludes that the term has not yet acquired the status of a conceptual category; moreover, even its linguistic reference is still undetermined. THE SCHOOL OF VISION Viktor Dyomin’s Berlin reflections. This publication from the archive of a well-known film critic and theoretician of the 1960s consists of a text written by him while serving as member of the jury of Berlin Film Festival in 1987 and of a short article, intended for potential publication in the foreign press. Publication and introduction by Hans-Joachim Schlegel. INTERLOCUTOR Anatoliy PETROV: «… Towards the hand-drawn “realism”». (Interviewed by Galina Barinova, Genrietta Gamaleya, Georgiy Borodin) Vladimir VYSHEGORODTSEV—Georgiy BORODIN. On mastery and craftsmanship. Interviews with two animation directors and artists FROM THE HISTORY OF FILM THOUGHT Boris REYFMAN. Reality and aesthetics of André Bazin’s «different realism» The author introduces the notion of a «different realism» and asserts that it is, in fact, the main object of Bazin’s inquiry, which is not yet divided with its «subjects» by a historic distance and therefore is able to «understand» them without the hermeneutic effort. What is at stake here is the opposition between ontological «adherence to reality» and existential «adherence to aesthetics». Although this opposition is never mentioned by Bazin in these exact terms, according to the author, it is authentic and is, moreover, one of the main oppositions in his theory. Dudley ANDREW. «Is a Camera Essential?» A chapter from «What Cinema Is!» (Translated by Inna Kushnaryova) We publish a chapter from the new book by Dudley Andrew, a renown American film theoretician and a specialist in the French film thought and Andrй Bazin’s theory. «What Cinema is!» is a fascinating answer to the famous Bazin’s question about the «idea of cinema». In this small, but concise book, published in 2010 by the Blackwell publishing house in its «Manifestos» series. Andrew’s task is «to trace the trace» of Bazin’s ideas in the context of the expansion of digital technologies in modern cinema. Keywords: film theory of the 1940s, André Bazin, Richard Linklater, digital video CINEMA: LIFE AND ADVENTURES Rafael’ AGADZHANYAN. 6, Likhov pereulok Memoirs about the author’s work at the Central Studio of Documentary Films (TsSDF), about memorable encounters, colleagues, temperaments. Pavel JURÁČEK. Diary (1959–974). (Conclusion. Translated and commentary by Galina Kompanichenko.) The final part of the diary of the Czech new wave’s key figure. CINEMA MUSEUM Aleksandr RAPOPORT. Odessa is the birthplace of film. The life and kinetoscope of Iosif Timchenko The article presents for the first time a detailed biographical account of a Ukrainian mechanical engineer who invented a cinema projector in 1893, and whose name has been semi-forgotten for so long. Keywords: early cinema, history of motion-picture technique, invention of cinema, kinetoscope REPUBLICATION Ilya EHRENBURG. Materialization of the fantastic. (Publication and introduction by Svetlana Ishevskaya, Natalia Ryabchikova and Artyom Sopin) Not much has been written about Ilya Ehrenburg—the art critic. Even less is written about his connection to cinema in spite of the fact that they are closely intertwined. He served as one of the main links between Russian and French film avant-garde. He managed to smuggle films into both countries, culturally isolated due to their contrary ideologies. He also wrote scripts to earn money and dabbled in film criticism for the same reason. However his book «Materialization of the Fantastic», published in1927, analytically summarizes avant-garde movements in the Soviet cinema of the 1920s. They are not simply contextualized in terms of the contemporary European avant-garde, but, from the author’s point of view, are inseparable from it. This book speaks volumes both about cinema and about Ehrenburg the critic. Therefore it seems important to bring this little‑known text back to the critical and historical attention. Keywords: film avant-garde of the 1920s, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Epstein, Dziga Vertov, René Clair, expressionism CHRONICLE. INFORMATION Conference «Eisenstein-Cinema-History». New-York (Natalia Ryabchikova) |
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является незаконным.