Overview of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union (General Overview)

• Serfs were agricultural slaves, comprising 40% of Russia's population and 70% of its agricultural areas, essentially treated as property and sold with the land.
• Serfdom was fundamental to Russia's agrarian economy.
• The Pale of Settlement, located in modern-day Poland, was a geographic boundary for Jewish settlements that imposed restrictions on converting and created challenges for Jewish people.
• Marx and Engels stated that whoever controls material production also controls mental production.
• Material production includes cultural production like cinema, becoming a foundation for Soviet cultural policy.
• The October Revolution in 1917 was actually a series of revolutions that led to the creation of the Soviet Union through worker-soldier councils.
• The revolution led to civil war (1918) between the Reds and Whites.
• The Bolsheviks used cinema as a propaganda tool for "proletarian culture".
• Lenin established professional revolutionaries as the new leadership class, justifying the revolution as necessary for workers' liberation.
• War Communism (1918-1920) occurred during the civil war following the October Revolution.
• It was marked by violent conflict between the Reds (Bolsheviks) and Whites (anti-Bolsh), with villages burned by both sides.
• International embargoes severely limited resources, causing economic hardship and food shortages.

Soviet Cinema Before 1917 Revolution

• Domestic film production capabilities were extremely limited.
• Technical equipment and film stock were imported from Germany and France.
• 90% of films shown were imports.
• The industry relied heavily on foreign agencies like Lumieres and Loman Cafe NE.
• Russia could not manufacture its own cameras or produce film stock.
• The first small studio was established around 1919.

Soviet Cinema After 1917 Revolution

• Cinema faced difficulties due to the civil war.
• Constant fighting between the Reds and Whites resulted in villages being burned.
• "Doctor Zhivago" depicted this violence and chaos.
• International embargoes meant no film equipment could be imported.
• Film companies left after the revolution, taking their equipment.
• Anatoly Lunacharsky served as the People's Commissar of Education.
• Art was used to inspire revolutionary political action.
• Proletkult (Proletarian Culture) aimed to radically modify culture as an instructor of the political revolution, striving to "take over culture" and create art supporting the revolution.
• There was an attempt to develop a "human religion" and "god building" to replace traditional religion.
• Lenin initially supported these ideas but eventually pulled back.
• Constructivism is an artistic philosophy that focuses on building and constructing art with a social purpose, beginning in 1913 with Vladmir Tatlin.
• There was a rejection of autonomous art.
• Agitki & Agitprop were propaganda vehicles touring Russia and using silent films to educate an illiterate population about the revolution.
• The Dictatorship of the Proletariat used cinema to construct a soviet mass society, legitimize the revolution, help citizens recognize themselves in societal transformations, and provide accessible culture.
• In 1919, Lenin's Film Industry Moves nationalized the Soviet film industry and placed it under the new Commissariat of Education.
• Lenin's wife, Nadezhda, was put in charge.

The First Film School

• The world's first film school was established in Moscow.
• It was called the All Union State Institute of Cinematography.
• The Moscow Film School was founded by the cinema committee.
• The soviet formalists viewed filmmaking as a synthesis of practical work, theoretical work, and intellectual-intuitive approach.
• Lev Kuleshov and the Kuleshov Workshop led the most innovative workshop at Moscow Film School with a constructivist approach.
• A central metaphor was film as a machine.
• They pioneered "films without celluloid", challenging traditional filmmaking techniques.
• The "Kuleshov Effect" demonstrated the power of juxtaposition.
• It used revolutionary editing techniques.
• A famous experiment showed an actor with a neutral expression paired with different images to prove how context dramatically changes audience perception and emotional interpretation.
• Creative geography, or artificial landscapes, created cinematic spaces that don't exist in physical reality, which challenged traditional notions of film representation and showed cinema as a medium of pure imagination and construction.
• Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a theatre director and actor interested in breaking down traditional theatrical experiences.
• Meyerhold developed "bio mechanics", breaking actors down into component movements to strip away traditional theatrical elements.
• He focused on basic worker uniforms as a foundation for new theatrical experiences and aimed to deconstruct and reconstruct performance through montage and attractions.
• Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein originally wanted to be an engineer, then went to theater, and then to film school.
• Eisenstein developed the concept of "Kino-fist" and aimed to use cinema as a revolutionary tool.
• Eisenstein's first film "Strike" embodied the October Revolution cinema concept.
• The goal was to "smash the spectator" and wake them up to the revolution.
• The FEX (or FEKS) group (Factory) used the montage of attractions and combined elements of cabaret, circus, improvisations, and music hall.
• Kino-Fist was Eisenstein's concept of "October Revolution cinema" intended to actively engage and provoke the audience and be a political revolutionary tool.
• Eisenstein used aggressive editing and montage techniques to create emotional and intellectual impact through film, like Battleship Potemkin.

Shot Duration

• Early cinema (1895-1905) used one shot or series of shots.
• Continuity editing (1905-1916) used increasingly shorter shots.
• Hollywood classical style (1910-1920) used average shot lengths of around 5 seconds.
• Battleship Potemkin (1925) was not specifically detailed.
• Synchronous sound (1927) expanded average shot length to about 10 seconds.
• The 1930s employed long takes, sometimes several minutes long.
• Realism emphasizes the shot and mechanical reality, capturing reality without intervention, and long takes with minimal editing.
• Constructivism/Formalism emphasizes the cut, the power of editing, and Revolutionary Marxist ideology to see film as a tool for social transformation.
• Eisenstein's Theory of Dialectical Montage states that montage can create new concepts through conflict.
• Inspired by Marxist dialectical philosophy, conflict between elements produces a new synthesis.
• Eisenstein's five separate types or methods of montage include: Metric (tempo-based), Rhythmic (shot tempo), Tonal (emotional charge), Overtonal (synthesis of previous types), and Intellectual/Ideological
• Constructivist Approach Highlights: Machine culture (Taylorism/Fordism), Kuleshov's experimental editing, and Meyerhold's biomechanics, with actors as machine-like performers.
• Fragmentation and reassembly as artistic technique, using intellectual montage as a dialectical tool for art and history.
• The New Economic Policy (1921-1924) led to Worker Transformation Dynamics.
• Unskilled peasants transitioned to factory workers, using motivational language with military-inspired terminology and performance descriptors.
• Psychological Strategy created a sense of military precision and revolutionary purpose.

Challenges in the Cinema Sector

• Widespread cinema closures.
• Severe film production shortages.
• Broken projection equipment.
• Heating infrastructure problems.
• Critical Need to re-equip film and photographic sectors and determine content to produce.
• Lenin's Cinema Ideology (1922)'s Landmark Declaration stated that "Cinema is the most important of all arts" as a Bolshevik Communication Strategy.
• Geopolitical Context involved internal isolation by civil war and external blocks by international embargoes.
• The Strategic Solution was a trade deal with Germany.
• German films were exchanged for equipment and film stock.
• In 1924, Lenin died and Stalin took over leadership.
• Cinema Policy Transformation increased political control, demanded more "heroic" narratives, and emphasized "optimistic" storytelling as Propaganda.
• Showcase "model worker citizen" lifestyle was created in the idealized representation of Soviet life with increased state control of the montage.
• Governmental Strategies (1925-1930) created Sovkino (new film company) and organized film distribution and production.
• Foreign film imports were restricted and domestic film production was boosted.
• The Primary Objective was to Expand film industry infrastructure.
• They Developed national cinematic identity with Human and machine.
• The Industrial Development Approach invited American industrial experts and Implemented infrastructure projects through Theoretical Foundations like Taylorism: scientific labor management and Post-WWI labor decisions based on scientific principles, which optimized worker performance through Fordism.
• Soviet montage and the constructive Artistic Philosophy Compared art studios and factories where Artwork was viewed as mechanical assemblage and Creativity treated as industrial production with Key Principles.
• An important principle was that Art is a systematic, engineered process and rejection of traditional artistic methods where Emphasis was placed on mechanical precision and functionality (Kabuki and the Marxist dialectic).

Art and Meaning

• Denotation is the object's literal meaning.
• Connotation relies on a picture of an hourglass in reference to time and mortality.
• Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) Coined "cinema verite" (film truth) in response to fiction.

End of Montage Movement

• First 5 Year Plan brought an end to soviet montage films were initially successful but became criticized as "Formalist error" and they favored technique over ideology.
• Socialist Realism was now the only acceptable style.
• Partiinost (Party-mindedness) meant films must align with communist party views.
• Narodnost (People-centered) focused on ordinary workers and was an extension of Stalinism.

Cultural Changes

• After Lenin's death Stalin took control in 1924 and declared cinema to be "the greatest medium of mass education".
• Works were to be heroic, optimistic, and show happy lives and strict government approval for all projects was now needed
• Nikita Khruschev Introduced cultural liberalization known as "Khoofstreet thought" and allowed the first Soviet adaptation of Shakespeare.
• Films needed to support Soviet values with less rigid control and cinema began to breathe.
• Gorbachev's reforms led to the emergence of parallel cinema movements and this was noted as "the end of the Soviet Union".
• 1986 Glasnost Policy allowed filmmakers to work more freely.

Spanish Cinema

• Christopher Coulumbus approached Italy and Spain to fund his voyage.
• Spain, after the Reconquista. agreed finance the voyage so gold and silver from American caused them to become a global power.
• The Spanish inquisition made those outside the Christian faith to be fined or tourtured.

Surrealism

• The first task when it came to poetry was to "study his soul" and reject Idenity by place.
• The surrealist counted characteristics of philosophers - this was a time of surrealist filmmaking.