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The Alexander Medvedkin reader / compiled by Alexander Medvedkin, Jay Leyda, and Nikita Lary ; translated and edited by Nikita Lary and Jay Leyda.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Medvedkin, Alexander, Author.
- Series:
- Cinema and modernity.
- Cinema and modernity
- Language:
- English
- Russian
- Subjects (All):
- Medvedkin, Alexander.
- Motion pictures--Soviet Union.
- Motion pictures.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (373 pages) : illustrations.
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2016]
- Summary:
- Filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin (1900–89), a contemporary of Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko, is celebrated today for his unique form of “total” documentary cinema, which aimed to bridge the distance between film and life, as well as for his use of satire during a period when the Soviet authorities preferred that laughter be confined to narrowly prescribed channels. This collection of selected writings by Medvedkin is the first of its kind and reveals how his work is a crucial link in the history of documentary film. Although he was a dedicated Communist, Medvedkin’s satirical approach and social critiques ultimately led to his suppression by the Soviet regime. State institutions held back or marginalized his work, and for many years, his films were assumed to have been lost or destroyed. These texts, many assembled for this volume by Medvedkin himself, document for the first time his considerable achievements, experiments in film and theater, and attempts to develop satire as a major Soviet film genre. Through scripts, letters, autobiographical writings, and more, we see a Medvedkin supported and admired by figures like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, and Maxim Gorky.
- Contents:
- On the front lines of war and revolution
- Cavalry days
- The kino-train: 294 days on wheels
- Soldiers shooting films
- Scripts
- A little log
- Stop thief!
- Fruit and vegetables
- A cock and bull story
- Hey fool, what a fool you are!
- Tit
- Look what love did!
- A crazy locomotive
- "The unholy force"
- "Gogol"
- Satire : a militant art
- The elation of fighting (ca. 1985)
- Satire: an assailant's weapon (ca. 1966)
- Bronze monuments
- Springboards (ca. 1985)
- Contextualizations
- Eisenstein on Medvedkin's Chaplinesque genius
- Anatoli Lunacharsky, "film comedy and satire" (excerpt)
- Nikolai Izvolov, "Alexander Medvedkin and the traditions of Russian film"
- Nikita Lary, "history of the Alexander Medvedkin reader"
- CVs and addenda
- First "autobiography": a Bolshevik's CV
- Second "autobiography": a filmmaker's CV
- Marina Goldovskaia, interviews with Medvedkin (excerpts)
- The suppression of happiness
- Color film in happiness
- Remembrance and revival
- The kino-train filmography (trans. Jay Leyda)
- Surviving kino-train films
- Chris Marker, "the last Bolshevik."
- Notes:
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 9780226296302
- 022629630X
- OCLC:
- 1233040596
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