The Language of Film – Poetry & Politics in Post-Soviet Cinema
Over the past century, Russian cinema has become adept at circumventing the authoritarian ideals of the state through a uniquely poetic style. We will explore how Russia’s visual art of cinema has appropriated techniques from the verbal art of poetry in order to express difficult, different, and dangerous ideas.
Series Events
Full Series Pass
Buy a pass to both sessions and receive a discount.
Tickets: $40 / $32 Avalon members
Buy Series PassWed, Oct 21, 10:30 am – 1:00 pm
Session 1, a 2 ½ hour lecture, will examine a movement in Russian cinema that has developed alongside the mainstream: poetic cinema. As the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) explained: “Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.” Film doesn’t have to be organized into linear, chronological narratives; it can be organized “in another way, which works above all to open the logic of a person’s thought.” Starting with one of the most influential examples of this trend, the cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956), we will trace how Russian filmmakers have developed a poetic style uniquely adapted to their culture and politics.
Tickets: $30 / $25 Avalon members
Session 2: LEVIATHAN Screening and Discussion
Wed, Oct 28, 10:30 am – 1:30 pm
An Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, LEVIATHAN is a modern day retelling of the Biblical story of Job set in Putin’s Russia. On the outskirts of a small coastal town in the Barents Sea lives an ordinary family: Kolya, his wife Lilya and their teenage son Romka. Kolya is forced into conflict with the town’s corrupt mayor when he is told that his house and business will be demolished. Kolya recruits his best friend Dmitri, a lawyer from Moscow, to help him, but Dmitri’s arrival brings further misfortune for Kolya and his family. R, 140 min, in Russian with English subtitles
Tickets: $15 / $12 Avalon members
Series Curator
Elizabeth A. Papazian is Associate Professor of Russian and Film Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and Co-Convener of the Graduate Field Committee in Film Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include literary and cinematic modernism, documentary modes in literature and film, and the intersection between art and politics in Soviet culture.