Professor Alexandar Mihailovic Office hours: Tuesdays 1:30-3:30, and by appointment Office: B-22 Marston Hall, (401) 863-3597 [email protected] Russian 1250 [SO2]: Russian Cinema (Fall 2013) Course Description: The course explores the world of Russian film and the groundbreaking achievements of cinematic innovators such as Eisenstein, Vertov and Tarkovsky, and contemporary filmmakers who aim a critical lens onto the authoritarian politics of Putin’s Russia. The course will provide an overview of Russian cinema and examine its aesthetic, political, and cultural dimensions from its beginnings to the present. The topics discussed will range from the use of innovative cinematic techniques to the role of ideology in constructing film, and the use of film in deconstructing ideology. 2 Course Objectives: Cinema has become the most popular art form during the last century. Along with its aesthetic dimension and popular appeal, cinema manifests powerful and intricate ties to the political, economic, and ideological structures of the society that produces it. The development of Russian cinema coincided with and has been shaped by two seminal events of the twentieth century: The Russian Revolution and Stalinism. These formative events propelled Russian filmmakers to the forefront of modern cinematography even as their freedom of expression was limited and their lives often threatened. The result is a number of universally recognized masterpieces by directors such as Eisenstein, Vertov, or Tarkovsky. The course will provide a chronological overview of Russian cinema. The films will be considered against the background of selected historical, political, aesthetic, and theoretical readings. The purpose of this class is to encourage thinking in more integrative and interdisciplinary ways about history, society, politics, and film. We will also discuss in depth some formal aspects of these films, addressing the use of cinematic devices and techniques such as shots and editing, construction of narratives, the use of sound and design. The role of the directors' belief systems or ideologies in constructing their films will be observed and discussed. We will also examine the cinematic treatment of the colonialist legacy within the Soviet Union and present-day Russia. Course Requirements: The written work for this course consists of four papers. Students will receive a choice of topics for each essay assignment well in advance of the deadline. All papers should be submitted electronically, in a .pdf format, by the dates indicated on the Schedule of Assignments below. Over the course of the semester, presentations and discussions on the Canvas site for the course may also be assigned, and will be counted as a part of class participation. The breakdown of the course grade is as follows: Class participation: 20% Three short papers (3-5 pages): 45% [15% each] Research term paper (12-15 pages): 35% Required Reading: Course packet (Available at Allegra copies on Thayer Street), and on E-Reserve through the OCRA and Canvas pages for the course. Viewing of Required Films: You may view the required films by either checking out the copy that is kept on reserve at the Sciences Library or Orwig, or by streaming them through the OCRA and Canvas pages for the course. 3 Schedule of Assignments: Introduction: the Russian Revolution in Filmmaking September 10: Sergei Eisenstein, Strike (1925) [optional viewing] Required reading: Lev Kuleshov, “Cinema as the Fixing of Theatrical Action;” “Americanism” Eisenstein, “The Montage of Attractions” [*Course packet] Susan Sontag, “The Decay of Cinema,” New York Times (25 February 1996) [*E- reserve] I. Early Giants: Montage and Experimentation A. Sergei Eisenstein September 17: Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) [required viewing] Required reading: Eisenstein, “Beyond the Shot”; “The Dramaturgy of Film Form (The Dialectical Approach to Film Form)” [*Course packet] Martin Scorsese, “The Persisting Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema.” New York Review of Books (13 August 2013) [*E-Reserve] B. Dziga Vertov September 24: Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) [required viewing] Required reading [*course packet]: Dziga Vertov, “We: A Version of Manifesto” (1922); “The Cine-Eye: A Revolution” (1923); “Fiction Film Drama and the Cine-Eye” (1924); “The Factory of Facts” (1926) Graham Roberts, “Signification and Significance” From his The Man with The Movie Camera **Friday, September 27 (noon): Deadline for electronic submission of first paper (3-5 pages) C. Aleksander Dovzhenko + Vsevolod Pudovkin 4 October 1: The Earth (1930) [required viewing]; The End of Petersburg (1927) [optional] Required reading [*Course packet]: Gilberto Perez, “The Meaning of Revolution” (pp. 161-192 of his The Material Ghost) Vance Kepley, Jr. “The End of St. Petersburg.” (p. 1-41) “The Problem of the Materialist Approach to Form” (on Strike); “The Fourth Dimension in Cinema”; Pudovkin, “Eisenstein” Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Alexandrov, “Statement on Sound” Amy Sargeant, “The End of St. Petersburg,” pp. 84-110. II. Stalinism and the Soviet Cinema A. Socialist Realism and Socialist Fantasy: Chapaev and Aleksandr Nevsky October 8: Vasiliev & Vasiliev, Chapaev (1935); Eisenstein, Alexandr Nevsky (1938) [both required viewing] Required reading [*Course packet]: Julian Graffy, “Chapaev the man, Chapaev the book” Peter Kenez, “Socialist Realism, 1933-41.” In his Cinema and the Soviet Society, pp. 143-61 B. The World According to Stalin: The Cult of the Leader and its Persistent Legacy in Putin’s Russia October 15: Eisenstein’s Ivan The Terrible (Part 1) [required viewing]; Ivan The Terrible (Part 2) [optional] (1945-6). Excerpt from Pavel Lungin’s Tsar (2011) Required reading [*Course packet]: Joan Neuberger, Ivan the Terrible, pp.96-131; André Bazin, “The Stalin Myth in Soviet Cinema” **Friday, October 18 (noon): Deadline for electronic submission of second paper (3-5 pages) III. Post-Stalinism or the Holes in the Iron Curtain A. The ‘New Wave’ of Russian Cinema October 22: Kalazatov’s The Cranes are Flying (1957) [required viewing] Required reading [*Course packet]: Maxim D. Shrayer, “Why Are the Cranes Still 5 Flying?” Russian Review 56:3 (July 1997), pp. 425-439. B. The Soviet Comedy: Humor as Subversion October 29: Ryazanov’s The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! (1975) [required viewing] Required reading [*E-reserve]: Excerpt from David MacFayden, The Sad Comedy of Éldar Riazanov: An Introduction to Russia's Most Popular Filmmaker (Montreal, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003) C. Being Serious in Soviet Times: Andrei Tarkovsky November 5: Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev (1966) [required viewing]; Excerpts from Solaris (1972) Required reading [*Course packet]: Vida Johnson, and Graham Petrie, “Andrei Rublev,” in their The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue; Vladimir Golstein, “Energy of Anxiety” (From Tarkovsky) IV. From Perestroika to Putin A. In search of a Soviet or Russian Hero? Balabanov’s Brother November 12: Balabanov’s Brother (1997) [Required viewing] Required reading [*Course packet]: Yana Hashamova, “Aleksei Balabanov’s Russian Hero: Fantasies of Wounded National Pride.” Slavic and East European Journal 51:2 (2007), 295-311. **Friday, November 15 (noon): Deadline for electronic submission of third paper (3-5 pages) B. Cinematic Responses to the Rise of Putinism November 19: Khrzhanovsky’s 4 (2005) Required reading: Jean Baudrillard, “Clone Story, in his Simulacra and Simulation, tr. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 95-103 [*E- Reserves]; Beumers, Birgit, “To Moscow! To Moscow? The Russian Hero and the Loss of the Center” [*Course packet] November 26: Stolpovskaya’s You I Love (2004) 6 Required reading [*E-Reserves]: Francesca Stella, “Queer Space, Pride and Shame in Moscow.” Slavic Review 72:3 (Fall 2013), 458-80 [*E-reserve] December 3: Shakhnazarov’s The Vanished Empire (2009) Required reading [*Course packet]: Colin Thubron, “The Khoremzian Solitude,” in his The Lost Heart of Asia (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 109-141. **Wednesday, December 18 (noon): Deadline for electronic submission of term paper (12-15 pages) BOOKS ON RESERVE Beumers, Birgit. A History of Russian Cinema. Berg: Oxford, England, 2009. _______ (ed). The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union. Wallflower Press, London, 2007. Bulatowa, Oksana. Sergei Eisenstein: A Biography. Tr. Anne Dwyer. The Potemkin Press, 2001. The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents. Edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Gillespie, David. Russian Cinema. New York : Longman, 2003. Kenez, Peter. Cinema and Soviet Society from Revolution to the Death of Stalin. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001. Kepley, Vance, Jr. The End of St. Petersburg. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. Johnson, Vida and Petrie, Vlada. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994. Leyda, Jay. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. New York: Macmillan, 1960. MacFayden, David. The Sad Comedy of Éldar Riazanov: An Introduction to Russia's Most Popular Filmmaker. Montreal, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. Nesbet, Anne. Savage Junctures. Sergei Eisenstein and the Shape of Thinking. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. Neuberger, Joan. Ivan the Terrible. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. 7 Rosen, Philip (ed). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. A Film Theory Reader. Columbia University Press, 1986. Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema.