RUSS 204
Russian and Soviet Cinema on History: The Imperial Trace Spring 2025
Division I
Cross-listed COMP 204 / GBST 204

This course surveys history of the twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union through the prism of the cinematic medium. We will watch and analyze key films of this period–films by Eisenstein, Vertov, Tarkovsky, Shepit’ko, Balabanov, and Fedorchenko among others–from a double perspective. On the one hand, we will study the cultural and historical contexts of the Soviet Union and Russia; on the other hand, we will learn the formal and stylistic aspects of the cinematic medium. From this double perspective, we will try to answer the following questions: How does cinema reflect and reframe Russia’s and Soviet Union’s imperial legacy? How does political “thaws” and “freezes” in the region change cinema as an industry and as an artform? What can we learn from the cinema of this period about the current war that Russia is waging against Ukraine? What kind of history we can learn through analyzing cinematic medium? In other words, we will take cinema neither simply as a direct reflection of state ideology nor as pure aesthetic form or entertainment for the masses. Rather, we will approach the films of this period as audio-visual texts that are rich in historical content and require our informed and attentive interpretation. By the end of this course, you will acquire a wide-ranging knowledge about the twentieth-century Russian and Soviet cinema, history, and culture. Upon successful completion of the course, you will train your eyes to enrich your film watching experience and sharpen your thinking about cinema as a medium to understand culture and history. To do so you will practice analyzing film style, reading scholarly texts critically, and writing about it.