Introduction to Russian and Soviet Film

Harvard FAS

The course introduces students to some of the most influential films in the history of cinema, such as the dynamic and politically-charged montage movies of Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, and their avant-garde contemporaries of the 1920s and 1930s. We will examine early Russian melodramas, the film culture of the Bolshevik Revolution, the exotic and eccentric movie-land fashioned by Russian emigres in Paris and Berlin, and the strictures of Stalin-era Socialist Realism. Students will learn…