Related Papers
“Nationalism, Heroism, and ‘Manliness’ in the Russian Films of Alexei Balabanov”
Walter Moss
Apparatus Journal
Review of Marina Rojavin, Tim Harte (eds): Soviet Films of the 1970s and Early 1980s
2022 •
Bogdan Popa
A/Z: Essays in Honor of Alexander Zholkovsky
Aleksei Balabanov's "Cinema about Cinema"
2018 •
Frederick H White
With the filmmaker’s untimely death in 2013, scholars will now begin to unpack exactly what Aleksei Balabanov achieved with his “cinema about cinema.” Watching Balabanov’s films as a singular postmodern text is important in understanding the entire trajectory of this cinematic narrative. In the films of Balabanov his frequent reflexivity goes beyond a critical consciousness of the lack of ultimate truths and, arguably, is more than ironic self-commentary. These intermedial self-references had become an anticipated characteristic of Balabanov’s films. In fact, Balabanov seemed to be acutely aware of the binary opposition between the sacred and the profane – especially in his later films. Over the course of more than a dozen feature films, Balabanov articulated a position that the technology of modernity refracted a neo-reality, one which further alienated people from the sacred. Russia’s degeneration was rooted in the materialist and political propaganda of the profane. The harmful messages transported by the television and the cinema enhanced the moral vacuity and bestial*ty of a Godless society – one which was vulnerable to the promises of miracle, mystery and authority by Russian authoritarianism. Balabanov’s “cinema about cinema” was a constant reminder that the simulacra of Russian reality was, in fact, a mediated visual text for interpretation; providing a social and political critique of post-Soviet society.
Brother," Enjoy Your Hypermodernity! Connections between Gilles Lipovetsky's Hypermodern Times and Post-Soviet Russian Cinema
2009 •
James Brandon
In prominent French social philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky’s Hypermodern Times (2005), the author asserts that the world has entered the period of hypermodernity, a time where the primary concepts of modernity are taken to their extreme conclusions. The conditions Lipovetsky described were already manifesting in a number of post-Soviet Russian films. In the tradition of Slavoj Zizek’s Enjoy Your Symptom (1992), this essay utilizes a number of post-Soviet Russian films to explicate Lipovetsky’s philosophy, while also using Lipovetsky’s ideas to explicate the films. Alexei Balabanov’s 1997 film Brat (“Brother”) is examined in the context of Lipovetsky’s work, along with other films from the era. This essay introduces Lipovetsky’s new intellectual worldview, and demonstrates how it might be applicable to the study of film and theatre. Introduction and Sources The social thought of French critic Gilles Lipovetsky, as presented in his 2005 book Hypermodern Times, is reflected in major work...
The Slavic and East European Journal
Birgit Beumers, editor. "Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema."
2001 •
Anthony Anemone
Rescripting Stalinist Masculinity: Contesting the Male Ideal in Soviet Film and Society, 1953-1968
2010 •
Marko Dumancic
Reanimation of a genre? a new start of late Soviet school film
Vadim Mikhailin
Just like madhouse, prison and army, school is a natural source for narratives, modeling a society as a whole through a conflict of an hierarchy with an individual. All these institutions are hierarchical, oriented at disciplinary practices, rigid, and are applying in any modern audience both to its commonsense knowledge and to its flair for the things exceptional, marginal, counter-intuitive, thus extrapolating any projective situation as compared to a spectator’s day-to-day experience and respectively arousing his curiosity. The school differs from all the rest in that it is initially diversified from within, for beside its hierarchical structure, disciplinary practices etc it inevitably refers to all the sum of human knowledge (and social institutions, moral attitudes and behaviourial practices linked to them) different spheres looming up behind the correspondent educational disciplines. Moreover in contrast with prison, army and asylum, the school experience is more or less universal, thus appealing to the intimate empathies of much wider audiences. It would be a mistake for the Soviet propaganda machine to pass by such a promising resource allowing to impose on its audience the convenient attitudes. It’s no surprise that the tradition of films based on the school subjects had a number of start-ups within different Soviet epochs. And it's rather characteristic that the genre seems to take a new start in modern Russia.
Corvinus Journal of International Affairs
Soviet Cinema and the enemies of Soviet values: East-West relations through the lens of Soviet movies
Mariam Zibzibadze
Review on dissertationreviews.org of Marko Dumancic, "Rescripting Stalinist Masculinity: Contesting the Male Ideal in Soviet Film and Society, 1953-1968," Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2010
Anatoly Pinsky
Engendering genre: The contemporary Russian buddy film
2009 •
Dawn Seckler
