СОДЕРЖАНИЕ |
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CONTENTS |
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ABRAM ROOM TURNS 120
From Proletarian Poets to «Bed and Sofa». Viktor Shklovskii’s project of screenplay «Stronger than Anything». Maria Bogomolova
Viktor SHKLOVSKII. Explanatory Note and a Draft of a Screenplay «Stronger than Anything.» Publication by Maria Bogomolova
The materials published here were preserved in RGALI in V.B.Shklovskii’s collection: a rough draft of the screenplay «Stronger than Anything» and a fragment of an explanatory note for it. According to the commentator, the project preceded the beginning of collaboration between Shklovskii and Room and was partially realized in the storyline of the famous film.
«Potholes» («Ukhaby»). Documents Related to the Lost «Proletarian Hit.» Publication by Artem Sopin and Aleksei Tremasov
Abram Room’s «Potholes» (1927) held an important position among his works as well as in the history of Soviet cinema of the late 1920s. The stills and productions photos as well as information from the press published here make it possible to imagine the now lost film.
«Director Room Has Taken a Position of Militant Formalism and Aestheticism, which Are Alien to Soviet Art.» Documents from Ukrainian archives and the press relating to the production history of «A Severe Young Man.» Introduction, publication, and commentary by Roman Rosliak Supplement. Visual materials relating to the first variant of «A Severe Young Man.» Publication by Anna Bulgakova
Stenographic records of discussions, excerpts from 1930s articles and other archival materials used in this segment provide insight into the way film administrators consistently made the director change the original conception of the film.
IN THE REALM OF CULTURE
Kirill RAZLOGOV. From «Real Socialism» to the Reality of Fantasy. Comparative Analysis of «Memory Images» in the Films of Andrzej Wajda and Aleksei German
The analysis of the treatment of the «real socialism» era in the light of memory transformation is done using two films, «Man of Marble» («Człowiek z marmuru») and «My Friend Ivan Lapshin,» made at the twilight of the Soviet Empire by two major director.
Olga LOSEVA. The Time of Georgians
Georgian cinema is rich with philosophical depths of the questions it poses, with the generous artistic understanding of the human destiny. And, consequently, with the original treatment of time.
FROM THE HISTORY OF FILM THOUGHT
Bozidar ZECEVIC. Serbian Avant-Garde and Cinema. Translated by Natalia Ryabchikova
Supplement. S[tanislav VINAVER]. Poetics of Cinema.— Boško TOKIN. Cinema is the Music of Light.—Expressionist Cinema.—Cinema of Dreams and Poetry.—Monny de BOULLY. About Pure Cinema (excerpt). Translated by Valentin Ognev
Texts, written by Serbian avant-garde writers in the period of 1920–1932, were influenced by German and Nordic film expressionism, Paris visualists and Russian art experiment at the beginning of, during and after the Revolution. These writers were coming up with montage and motion, the key devices of the whole avant-garde, key to all of its movement. The publication of articles on film by figures of the Serbian avantgarde is prefaced by an in-depth essay by the Serbian film theorist Bozidar Zecevic.
Michael WEDEL. Cinema Artist. On William Wauer.
William WAUER. Artistic Foundations of Cinema.—Reality in Cinema. Translated by Anna Kukes, edited by Naum Kleiman
The article by Michael Wedel that precedes our publication of two essays by William Wauer fills in the blank space in the history of German and world cinema. It treats Wauer as a major figure whose work connected the stylistic model of expressivity of the German (and European) cinema of the 1910s, which Wauer conceptualized early on as a cinema variant of expressionism in painting, and the stylistic movement of expressionist cinema of the 1920s.
THEORY
Raymond BELLOUR. The Film Spectator: A Unique Memory. Translated by Vera Rumiantseva
The author addresses mechanisms of forgetting and remembering in their connection to film projection and aura (Walter Benjamin’s term) of the screen; he suggests historical classification of spectator types and traces a number of transformations that film spectacle has undergone in the era of audiovisual media.
Elena GRUZDEVA. The Theory of Distance in Search of Lost Time Artavazd Peleshian’s «Distance Montage, or The Theory of Distance» in the sphere of psychoanalysis.
SCHOOL OF VISION
Anastasia ALESHCHENKO. «Love Never Fails...»
Maria POKROVSKAIA. «Off-Road» Nordic Cinema
Olga LOSEVA. Traumatic Experience of the «New» Greek Cinema
Margarita VIROVA. Bad Vacation
«Thank God I’m an Atheist!» A roundtable on an important problem of film art. And of other areas
Views on contemporary cinema and its problems from the young generation of film scholars, the graduating class of VGIK.
EISENSTEIN READINGS
Ada ACKERMA N. «The highest shave to be received»: Sergei Eisenstein and Margaret Bourke-White. Translated by Vera Rumiantseva
The article concerns the friendship between Sergei Eisenstein and photographer Margaret Bourke-White, her role of an intermediate between the director and the United States in the 1930s, and to the political and diplomatic manifestations of this friendship.
«…Nothing Changes in the Gnezdnikovskii Little Nest.» Sergei Eisenstein’s essays on the system of cinema administration. 1928. Introduction, publication, and commentary by Artem Sopin
The publication of the original author’s versions of the articles «Why Soviet Cinema Has Been Losing its Lustre» and «The Twelfth Year,» published in abridged form in the «Soviet Screen» magazine in 1928. The articles show Eisenstein’s views on Sovkino’s policy and on the features of the Soviet film history of the late 1920s; besides that, they are exemplary of his op-ed style.
TOWARDS INTERPRETATION OF A FILM
Paul «Pablo» MARTIN and Valerie RENEGAR. The Man for His Time: «The Big Lebowski» as Carnivalesque Social Critique. Translated by Nina Tsyrkun
This essay explores the ability of carnivalesque rhetorical strategies to challenge hegemonic social hierarchies and the social order in general. In analyzing «The Big Lebowski» as a carnivalesque text, the film’s critical stance becomes clear—it proposes an alternative worldview contrary to that which dominated the political and social landscapes of the United States at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991.
INTERLOCUTOR
Tomochka. A Conversation of Viktor Listov and Olga Toom about Dziga Vertov, 18 July 1976
Reminiscences about the 1920s by Dziga Vertov’s first wife and—for a brief time—collaborator.
EXPERIENCE
Valerii TURITSYN. Jacques Feyder and Several Half-forgotten Chapters of His Career.
An analysis of one of the major but underappreciated works of Jacques Feyder from the 1920s, «Visages d’enfants» («Faces of Children,» 1925), as well as half-forgotten by film scholars «Gribiche» (1926) and «The Kiss» (1929).
Margarita VASIL’EVA. The Characteristics of David Cronenberg’s Conception of Genre (in the Context of Postmodernist Aesthetics)
The article discusses the works of David Cronenberg, characterized by a deliberate confusion between genre cinema and auteur cinema and corresponding therefore to the concept of postmodernism that denies that art can be divided into mass and elite one.
IN MEMORIAM
A Conversation between Critic Guy Gauthier and Alain Resnais about Chris Marker. Translated by Ekaterina Maksimova
J. HOBERMAN. The Lost Futures of Chris Marker. Translated by Naum Kleiman
Dedicated to the memory of departed geniuses. On 1 March 2014 we lost Alain Resnais. Chris Marker departed a year and a half before that, on 29 July 2012, his birthday…
HISTORICAL MAIL
«There must be Truth on Earth, After All!» A letter from L.A.Gurevich to the General Secretary of CC KPSU N.S.Khrushchev.—A letter from Iulii Dunskii and Valerii Frid to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Organizational Committee of the Union of Russian Filmmakers Comrade I.A.Pyr’ev.
Two letters about the difficult way in cinema of the scriptwriter, film scholar, and teacher Leonid Abramovich Gurevich (1932–2001).
PROBLEM (EXPERIENCE AND REFLECTIONS)
Egor KAIRON. Brigitte Helm’s Photogénie
The article explores suggestion (in the psychoanalytical sense) of the legendaryGerman actress Brigitte Helm. Following classical works on photogénie the author traces the progress of Helm’s heroines from face to mask, from the union of mask andface to the displacement of one by the other.
Anna MAL’GINA. The Poetics of Gesture in Soviet Cinema’s «NewWave.» Mikhail Kalik’s «To Love…»
The subject of the article is the poetics of gesture in the films of the Soviet «New Wave.» The 1960s is the time when «the big style» disintegrated and a new concept of personality and new means of expression (the so-called «poetics of sincerity») were developed. The new concept of personality required new means of expression for complex emotional states, including expression on the non-verbal level. The author explores the poetics of gesture using Mikhail Kalik’s, especially his «To Love…» as her examples. In this film the combination of fictional and documentary fragments allows to compare «natural» and «staged» body language.
SUBJECT FOR EXPLORATION
Artem SOPIN. …Approaching the Unknown
The essay is on the gradual and implicit manifestation of modernity as history as an inner plot of Pavel Arsenov’s mini-series «Guest from the Future» (1984).
FILM POLITICS
Galiia IUSUPOVA. «To Give Pictures with No Explicit Revolutionary Tendency.» Soviet Film Export in the 1920s
On the way export of Soviet films abroad worked in the 1920s.
CINEMA: LIFE AND ADVENTURE
Aleksandr RAPOPORT. Moisei Freidenberg. An Affair with Cinema that Never Happened
The author talks about an aviator, inventor, and journalist Moisei Filippovich Freidenberg who invented a model of kinetoscope and carried out a commission from the optics and mechanics workshop of Timchenko. The lack of money did not allow Freidenberg to arrange a public demonstration of his device and the title of inventors of cinema went to the Lumière brothers. |
