Slot: 29C–5 Dec.
29, 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Panel: Film Directors and Their Creations
Chair: Anthony Anemone, The New School
University
Title: Dreaming through the Eyes of the Dead:
The Epilogue of Ivan’s Childhood
Author: Robert Efird, Virginia Tech
One of the more prominent alterations
made by Andrei Tarkovsky in his screen adaptation of Vladimir Bogomolov’s
novella Ivan was the
insertion of dream sequences at key points in the siuzhet. The first three dreams, as well as a
nightmarish waking vision, are all presented through the consciousness of the
title character, a twelve-year-old Red Army scout. The final dream, however,
takes place immediately after it is learned by Lt. Galtsev, the first-person
narrator of Bogomolov’s novella and the primary mediator of fabula information in Tarkovsky’s cinematic
narrative, that Ivan has been executed by the Gestapo.
While critics
have generally avoided detailed analyses of the conclusion of Ivan’s
Childhood, several possible explanations have been
offered for the perceptual source of this final dream and the thematic
implications of its placement at the film’s conclusion. In one of the most
perceptive, Peter Green hypothesizes that this sequence may be “the product of
that merging of identities that was later to become the central feature of
Tarkovsky’s work” (35). Unfortunately, Green provides no further support for
his interpretation and subsequent critics have not pursued this possibility.
In addition to
summarizing the complex narrative process of Ivan’s Childhood, this paper provides a detailed analysis
of the different ways in which Tarkovsky encourages the viewer to form an
associative link between the characters of Ivan and Galtsev, setting the stage
for what occurs in the final moments. Though the findings presented here lend
credence to Green’s hypothesis, the conclusion of this paper argues that the
final dream represents not merely a merging of consciousness, but - as in many
of Tarkovsky’s later films - the opening of an alternative diegetic reality.
Green, Peter. Andrei Tarkovsky: The
Winding Quest. London:
Macmillan, 1993.
Title: Brief Encounters: ‘Provincial Melodrama’
by Kira Muratova in the Context of Soviet Cinema of the 1930s – 1960s
Author: Vadim Besprozvany, University of Michigan
One of the most significant modern
Russian Ukrainian film directors Kira Muratova started her mature cinematic
career in 1967 with her first feature film titled Brief Encounters. It is now an established tradition in
film criticism to call this film “provincial melodrama” (Taubman 11). This
genre label is understood in two ways: pejoratively – with an emphasis on both
words – and ironically – with implied rejection of both words. At any rate
there are certain strings that attach this film to the genre of melodrama. It
is clear that the nature of the social function of melodrama is historically
determined. Muratova was among those “children of the Thaw” who pressed toward finding their own
ways in art, creating their own cinema rather than following mandatory
cinematic patterns unavoidable during Stalin’s Winter (Kenez 240). This historical situation
assumed not only a search for new directions in cinema, but also disgust with Stalinism
and a rejection of Stalinist cultural models. That is why the early stage of
Muratova’s cinematic career should be placed in two contexts: the
liberalization of 1960s and totalitarianism of 1930s-1940s. These two chronological and typological
periods in the history of Soviet cinema positioned themselves in regard to
melodrama quite differently but both have shown a great deal of interest in
this genre. An important factor in looking at Muratova’s film from the
perspective of Soviet cinema is that Brief Encounters was received and appreciated within the
context of the national cinematography. Considering the fact that most Western
films were unavailable to Muratova at this time, it is obvious that she,
paradoxically, employed stereotypes of Stalinist films on her way to a cinema
of the Thaw. Melodrama was a niche that allowed her to comply with values
accepted by contemporary Soviet filmmaking.
References
Kenez, Peter. Cinema and Soviet
Society, 1917-1953.
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Taubman, Jane. Kira Muratova. London, New York: I.B.TAURIS, 2005.
Title: Political Violence in the Films of Karen
Shakhnazarov
Author: Gerald McCausland, University of
Pittsburgh
Thirteen years separate two films by
Karen Shakhnazarov that treat the problem of political violence. Assassin of
the Tsar (1991)
considers the murder of Nicholas II and his family in Ekaterinburg on the
orders of the Bolshevik regime, while A Rider Named Death (2004) adapts a literary text that deals
with political assassinations in the earliest years of the twentieth century.
While murder in the earlier film is depicted as an act of both political and
psychological madness, violence in the latter film is given the name of
terrorism–a designation most appropriate for a film made in the earliest years
of the twenty-first century.
While a directly political analysis of
these two films may lead to an accurate interpretation, a fuller understanding
of their significance requires a consideration of both their place in Shakhnazarov’s
larger oeuvre as well
as of their psychological structure on both intrinsic and extrinsic levels. Assassin
of the Tsar, like its
better-known predecessor, City Zero
(1988), depicts how history weighs heavily on late- and post-Soviet Russia.
While individuals are depicted to a great extent as victims of history,
Yurovsky’s drama demonstrates the way in which identity and recognition are
bought at the price of personal guilt. The terrorists in A Rider Named Death are no longer victims of history, nor do
they attempt to enter into a dialogue with history. The strange figure of
George (Andrei Panin), at once both exceptional and central, serves as the
focal point for Shakhnazarov’s analysis of modern-day terrorism. With reference
to some basic psychoanalytic concepts formulated by Sigmund Freud and Jacques
Lacan, this paper will examine the particular ways in which the latter film
illuminates the imaginary dialectic of individual and collective, a dynamic
which continues to condition a disturbed relationship between politics and
society in contemporary Russian culture.
Title: Fathers and Sons in Some Contemporary
Russian Films
Author: Angelina Ilieva, Independent Scholar
If the image of the superfluous man
reflected nineteenth century anxieties about masculinity (the anxiety of the
weak man who could become a symbolic father), and if socialist realism
attempted to create the image of the strong masculine hero, could we try to
write the story of the issue of masculinity and paternity in post-Soviet times?
Foregrounding
the discussion in the image of the absent father in the works of writers such
as Petrushevskaia and in films, such as Balabanov's Brat, this paper will discuss the treatment
of masculinity and fatherhood in some films of the 2000s. Sokurov's 2003 Father
and Son can be seen as a
response to Rebro Adama
— it eliminates the mother and posits a relation with a woman as a sort of
betrayal, while at the same time mythologizing the father-son bond and endowing
it with mysticism and tenderness bordering on eroticism. The 2003 Koktebel' also explores the father-son relation,
though in less poetic ways, yet also sees relations with a woman as a type of
foreign intrusion. Vziagintsev's 2003 masterpiece Vozvrashchenie, on the other hand, examines the fear of
and longing for a father, and returns to the horror of parricide, while Kirill
Serebrenikov's 2005 Izobrazhaia zhertvu reworks the ghost of the father and Hamlet in unexpected
ways. The paper will end by considering the issues of masculinity and
fatherhood in relation to the issues of post-Soviet (national) identity.