Screening Soviet nationalities : kulturfilms from the Far North to Central Asia / Oksana Sarkisova.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sarkisova, Oksana, 1974- author.

Contributor:

Bloomsbury (Firm), publisher.

Series:

KINO, the Russian cinema series.

KINO : the Russian and Soviet cinema series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Political aspects--Soviet Union.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Social aspects--Soviet Union.

Motion pictures--Soviet Union--History--1925-1953.

Nationalism in motion pictures.

Soviet Union--In motion pictures.

Soviet Union.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (322 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

First edition.

Distribution:

London, England : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Place of Publication:

London, England : I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2016.

Summary:

"Filmmakers in the early decades of the Soviet Union sought to create a cinematic map of the new state by portraying its land and peoples on screen. Such films created blueprints of the Soviet domain's scenic, cultural and ethnographic perimeters and brought together - in many ways disparate - nations under one umbrella. Categorised as kulturfilms, they served as experimental grounds for developing the cinematic formulae of a multiethnic, multinational Soviet identity. Screening Soviet Nationalities examines the non-fictional representations of Soviet borderlands from the Far North to the Northern Caucasus and Central Asia between 1925-1940. Beginning with Dziga Vertov and his vision of the Soviet space as a unified, multinational mosaic, Oksana Sarkisova rediscovers films by Vladimir Erofeev, Vladimir Shneiderov, Alexander Litvinov, Mikhail Slutskii, Amo Bek-Nazarov, Mikhail Kalatozov, Roman Karmen and other filmmakers who helped construct an image of Soviet ethnic diversity and left behind a lasting visual legacy.The book contributes to our understanding of changing ethnographic conventions of representation, looks at studies of diversity despite the homogenising ambitions of the Soviet project, and reexamines methods of blending reality and fiction as part of both ideological and educational agendas. Using a wealth of unexplored archival evidence from the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive (RGAKFD) as well as the Gosfilmofond state film archive, Sarkisova examines constructions of exoticism, backwardness and Soviet-driven modernity through these remarkable and underexplored historical travelogues."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : projects of a new vision

They must be represented : kulturfilm and the national niche in Soviet cinema

Absolute kinography : Vertov's cine-race across the Soviet universe

Arctic travelogues : conquering the Soviet Far North

Forest people, wild and tamed : travelogues in the Far East

Diagnosing the nations : nationalizing dirt and disease on the screen

Touring the Caucasus

Camels and railways : reframing Central Asia.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273- 290), filmography (pages 266-272) and index.

ISBN:

9781350987944

1350987948

9781786730404

1786730405

9781786720405

178672040X

OCLC:

971364159