Overcoming the Anxiety of Authorship: Film Adaptations of Russian Classics in the 1990s-2000s

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel will demonstrate how adaptations use and foreground only those aspects of complex 19th-c. narratives and characterisation which conform to the ideology of their own time. The papers will unearth the ideology at work in the adaptative strategies of several filmmakers who reinterpret Russian canonical texts written by Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov. Following Robert Stam’s assertion that “adaptations ‘adapt’ to changing environments and changing taste as well as to new aesthetic norms”, the papers will focus on the role of filmmakers as co-authors of the original texts, highlighting thereby the evolutionary aspect of adaptation.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Russian and Eurasian

Chair

• Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton U

Papers

• Reimagining Fathers and Sons for the 21st Century: Dunya Smirnova’s 2008 Appropriation of Turgenev’s Novel - Alexandra Smith, U of Edinburgh (UK)

• So could it be the same Anna?: The 2012 British Screen Version of Tolstoy’s Novel - Olga Yuri Sobolev, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK) / U of London (UK)

• Anton Chekhov’s Plays on the American Screen: Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and The Seagull (2018) - Olga Simonova Partan, College of the Holy Cross

Discussant

• Milla (Lioudmila) Fedorova, Georgetown U

Session Manager

• John Meyer, LASA