HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN CULTURE

The course falls into the learning area "Literatures and cultures" and is entitled “RUSSIAN HISTORY AND SOCIETY THROUGH FILM". It introduces students to the Russian and Soviet film tradition and the history of the Soviet film industry from the silent to the sound period, including the cinema of glasnost and the post-Soviet era. At the centre of the module is the role of the cinema in the construction of Soviet and post-Soviet historical narrative and shaping of Russian historical imagination. Taught in Russian.

1. Knowledge and understanding
● This course aims to enable students to gain a general knowledge of the history and significance of Russian/Soviet and Post-Soviet cinema.
● To develop analytical skills, such as analytical thinking, information gathering, and identifying and resolving problems.
● To develop a knowledge of the progress of cinematic techniques from client cinema to the contemporary cinematic forms and the theories developed to explain, enrich and guide the development of these techniques.
● To gain an awareness of the importance of the institutional and political context in which Soviet cinema developed.
● To develop cultural awareness, critical analysis, creative thinking and intellectual independence.

2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
● Students will acquire the historical and cultural background that is essential to understand the formation of the history of Russian and Soviet film and of post-Soviet cinema.
● They will demonstrate a basic understanding of the history of Russian and Soviet film and of its role in Russian culture and compare Western and Russian cinema.
● They will develop analytical skills, such as analytical thinking, information gathering, and identifying and resolving problems.
● They will gain an awareness of the importance of the institutional and political context in which Soviet cinema developed in the 20th and 21st centuries.
● Students will be able to critically analyse and apply film theory, theory of montage and camera-work. They will also learn how to demonstrate a basic knowledge of key features of cultural and historical analysis of film in target language.
● Students will learn how to use a basic special Russian vocabulary for discussing cinema, how to build a structured and reasoned argument to support ideas about it and evaluate film material, both orally and in writing in Russian.
● Students will be able to interpret historical and cultural contexts of the films.

3. Judgment capacity
● Students will be able to gather, process and evaluate critically information from a variety of paper, audio-visual and electronic sources in the process of preparation for the exam.
● Students will develop conceptual approach to the cinema.
● Students will develop skills for independent research and the ability to analyse critical texts.

4. Communication skills
● Students will develop key communication skills: effective listening, writing, speaking; verbal and written communicative skills as well as oral presentation skills in Russian.
● Students will develop ability to communicate clearly and effectively in oral and written forms (oral presentations, written exam) in target language;
● Students will learn how to share and negotiate ideas in a group.

5. Learning skills
● Students will develop skills for independent research and the ability to analyse films, works of leading film-directors, and film genres in their cultural and historical contexts.
● Students will be able to gather, process and evaluate critically information from a variety of paper, audio-visual and electronic sources in the process of preparation of class presentations; students will develop conceptual approach to the materials they will be working with and will learn how to provide at the exam substantial proof for the ideas that were developed as a result of their individual research.
● Development of awareness of and engagement with range of debates and critical (secondary) works on the subject.
● Development of independent film analyses and interpretation.

The knowledge of the basic historic and cultural evolution of Russia. Russian language at B1/B2 level is required.

Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 has significantly changed the course of Russian cultural history. Breaking with the past, rejecting most traditional models, the young Soviet culture “searched” for the new non-traditional forms of self-expression. As the newest art form, film became one of the most popular media of the new Soviet culture. Vladimir Lenin called it “the most important tool of contemporary political propaganda.” Due to the very early politization of the Soviet culture, the film industry became the clearest reflection and record keeper of major political twists in Soviet history as well as everyday life. In this course an attempt will be made to follow the major developments in Russia/Soviet Union through the eyes of the movie producers who acted as allies as well as critics of the Soviet government (for which their productions were abounded). The focus of the course will be on the examination of major episodes of Russian/Soviet past and their impact on present cultural development in Russia though Russian cinema. Films that are selected for the discussions present major segments of cultural history in Russia.

• David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 1997).
• Jill Nelmes. An Introduction to Film Studies (London, 1996).
• David Bordwell. The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film. – Cinema Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1972
• Sergei Eisenstein. The Montage of Film Attractions – Selected Works, Vol. 1 (London, BFI, 1988).
• James Goodwin. Eisenstein, Cinema, and History (Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1993).
• Richard Taylor. The Battleship Potemkin. The Film Companion (London: I.B.Tauris, 2001).
• Richard Taylor. Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London, 1979).
• Vsevolod Pudovkin. Film Technique. On Editing.
• Amy Sargeant. Vsevolod Pudovkin Classic Films of the Soviet Avant-garde (London: I.B.Tauris, 2008).
• Richard Taylor (ed.). The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents (London, 1988).
• James Goodwin. Eisenstein, Cinema, and History (Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1993).
• Pierre Sorlin. The Film in History: Restaging the Past (Oxford, 1980).
• Vance Kepley. The End of St. Petersburg (London, 2003).
• L. & J. Schnitzer and Marcel Martin, eds. Cinema in Revolution: The Heroic Era in the Soviet Film.
• The Film Factory: (London, 1988).
• Jeremy Hicks. Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film (London: BFI).
• Graham Roberts. The Man with the Movie-Camera (London).
• Dziga Vertov. Kino-Eye (Berkeley, 1984).
• J. Murray-Brown. False cinema: Dziga Vertov and Early Soviet Film // The New Criterion, November, 1989.
• Vlada Petric. Constructivism in Film: The Man with the Movie Camera: A Cinematic Analysis (Cambridge, 1993)
• Graham Roberts. Forward Soviet! History and Non-Fiction Film in the USSR (London, 1999.
• Lynne Atwood (ed.). Red Women on the Silent Screen (London, 1993).
• Judith Mayne. Kino and the Woman Question: Feminism and Soviet Silent Film (Columbus, 1989).
• Yuri Tsivian. Man with a Movie Camera – Lenses of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties. – In: Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema. Ed. By Ted Perry (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2003.
• Julian Graffy. Bed and Sofa (London, 2001).
• Vance Kepley. In the Service of the State: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko (Madison, 1986).
• George Liber. Alexander Dovzhenko. A Life in Soviet Film (London).
• Emma Widdis. Alexander Medvedkin (London, 2005).
• Richard Stites. Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900 (Cambridge, 1992)
• Rimgaila Salys The Musical Comedy Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov: Laughing Matters (Chicago, 2010).
• Maya Turovskaia. The Tastes of Soviet Moviegoers during the 1930s. – Thomas Lahusen (ed.) Late Soviet Culture (Durham & London, 1993).
• Inside Soviet Film Satire: Laughter with a Lash. Ed. By Andrew Horton (Cambridge, 1993).
• Richard Taylor (ed.). The Eisenstein Reader (London: BFI, 1998).
• David Bordwell. The Cinema of Eisenstein (Cambridge, 1993).
• Richard Taylor & Derek Spring (eds.) Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (London, 1993).
• Evgeny Dobrenko. Stalinist Cinema and Production of History: Museum of the Revolution (New Heaven & London: Yale UP, 2008).
• Joan Neuberger. Ivan the Terrible (London, 2003).
• Yuri Tsivian. Ivan the Terrible (London, 2001).
• Kristin Thompson. Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible: A Neoformalist Analysis (Princeton, 1981).
• Vida Johnson & Graham Petrie. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue (Bloomington, 1994).
• Maya Turovskaya. Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry (London, 1989)
• Denise Youngblood. Andrei Rublev: The Medieval Epic As Post-Utopian History. – In: Vivian Sobchack (ed.). The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event (London, 1996).
• Andrey Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (New York, 1987).
• Josephine Woll and Denise J. Youngblood. Repentance (London : I.B. Tauris, 2001).

The oral exam (in Russian) will be held as follows: all students will receive a list of questions that were discussed during the course in lectures and seminars. Questions will only be on the topics presented during the classes. From this list, each student will choose three topics and prepare them. During the exam the student will answer one of three topics selected by the examiner. Each exam will last up to 30 minutes.

oral

1) Regarding the grading of the grade (the way in which the grades will be assigned), regardless of the
attending or non-attending mode:
A. scores in the 18-22 range will be awarded in the presence of:
- sufficient knowledge and ability to understand applied in reference to the program;
- limited ability to collect and/or interpret data, formulating independent judgments;
- sufficient communication skills, especially in relation to the use of specific language that pertains to the
economic functioning of public services;
B. scores in the 23-26 range will be awarded in the presence of:
- fair knowledge and ability to understand applied in reference to the program;
- fair ability to collect and/or interpret data, formulating independent judgments;
- fair communication skills, especially in relation to the use of specific language that pertains to the
economic functioning of public services;
C. scores in the 27-30 range will be awarded in the presence of:
- good or excellent knowledge and understanding applied in reference to the program;
- good or excellent ability to collect and/or interpret data, formulating independent judgments;
- fully appropriate communication skills, especially in relation to the use of specific language that
pertains to the economic functioning of public services.
D. honors will be awarded in the presence of knowledge and understanding applied in reference to the
program, judgment and communication skills, excellent.
2) Evaluation grid:
28-30L: mastery of the topics covered in class and in the manuals; ability to hierarchize information;
use of appropriate technical terminology;
26-27: good knowledge of the topics covered in class and, to a lesser extent, in the manuals; fair ability
in organizing information and presenting it orally; familiarity with technical terminology;
24-25: not always in-depth knowledge of the topics covered in class and in the manuals; oral presentation
orderly but with not always correct use of technical terminology;
22-23: often superficial knowledge of the topics covered in class and in the manuals; oral presentation
unclear and lacking in technical terminology;
18-21: knowledge at times incomplete of the topics covered in class and in the manuals; oral presentation confused,
with little use of technical terminology.
3) As regards the grading of the grade, the scores will be assigned according to the following scheme:
A. scores in the 18-22 range will be awarded in the presence of sufficient knowledge of the authors and sufficient

Lectures and seminars by professor.