Liberating Narratives: Experiments with Soviet Film Storytelling

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores cinematic narratives of the Stalinist past and present with the aim of breathing new life into the analysis of Soviet film. The first paper engages with Shklovsky’s theory of narrativity to propose a means of approaching Stalin-era films unbounded by narrative positionality and chronology. The second, examines the real-life fulfillment of the socialist realist master plot and the search for new meaning that this narrative completion inspired in late Stalin-era cinema. The final paper investigates late-Soviet engagement with the Stalinist past and the question of whether to narrate or simply describe this fraught period. All three highlight the surprising degree of narrative experimentation in Soviet films that have otherwise often been deemed formulaic.

Sub Unit

• Cinema, Television, Electronic Media

Chair

• Anna Kovalova, U of Pittsburgh

Papers

• Viktor Shklovsky’s Theory of Film Narrativity - Maria Belodubrovskaya, U of Chicago

• Narrative Completion and the Postwar Crisis in Socialist Realism on Screen - Claire Knight, U of Bristol (UK)

• Time Travel and Time Loops in Late Soviet Film and Literature - Jessica E Merrill, Columbia U

Discussant

• Anna Toropova, U of Warwick (UK)