Women in Soviet Film: The Thaw and Post-Thaw Periods

ISBN-13: 9781138221642 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 216 str.

USA) Marina Rojavin (Bryn Mawr College; USA) Tim Harte (Bryn Mawr College

Opis

This book illuminates and explores the representation of women in Soviet cinema from the late 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the 1970s, a period when Soviet culture shifted away, to varying degrees, from the well-established conventions of socialist realism. Covering films about working class women, rural and urban women, and women from the intelligentsia, it probes various cinematic genres and approaches to film aesthetics, while it also highlights how Soviet cinema depicted the ambiguity of emerging gender roles, pressing social issues, and evolving relationships between men and women. It thereby casts a penetrating light on society and culture in this crucial period of the Soviet Union’s development.

Recenzje

‘Critics and viewers typically perceive the cinema of the late Soviet period as dominated by male stars, male directors, and the male gaze. Women in Soviet Film complicates this perspective by revealing the "womanly face" of Thaw and Stagnation cinema. Defying expectations, a gendered critique of Soviet (and especially late Soviet) patriarchality in the cinema of the 1960-70s appears to be more profound and more disquieting than in the following, much more liberal times. Most paradoxically, as the volume’s authors eloquently demonstrate, this deconstruction was performed from within popular cinematic genres, in mainstream films and by beloved stars. This hidden streak of gendered subversion within mainstream Soviet cinema, is a true discovery superbly presented by this collection of articles.’ - Mark Lipovetsky, Professor of Russian Studies, University of Colorado-Boulder