A 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.

Acknowledgments 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