Intro to Soviet Cinema

(4 Credits)

This course explores groundbreaking films that profoundly influenced Soviet and world cinema. Moving between experimental and popular works, we will examine film narrative and form in relation to major events in Soviet cultural history and with special attention to the aesthetic legacies of the Russian Revolution and the project of socialist worldbuilding. As ethnic minorities, dissidents, women, and people who in today’s parlance could be termed “LGBTQ,” many of the most celebrated filmmakers on our syllabus (Eisenstein, Vertov, Dovzhenko, Shepitko, Tarkovsky, Paradjanov, and Muratova) occupied marginalized positions within the Soviet cultural establishment. Our discussions will consider their formal innovations as well as their cinematic representations of nationalism, imperialism, Stalinism, gender, and sexuality. Students will become familiar with key concepts in film criticism and theory, and they will have the option to make short films of their own. All films will have English subtitles. No previous knowledge of Soviet culture, film history, or filmmaking is required.