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Lecture: Marsha Siefert: Soviet Cinematic Internationalism and Socialist Filmmaking, 1955-1972

When

Apr 18, 2017 from 06:00 to 08:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC200)

Where

Phil I, Building G, R.333

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Contact Phone

0049-641-99-28251

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Soviet Cinematic Internationalism and Socialist Filmmaking, 1955-1972

 

This talk explores Soviet attempts after 1955 to influence, coordinate, and cooperate with socialist filmmakers in creating, distributing and promoting films perceived as potentially sympathetic to their goals. In addition to the bilateral exchange agreements, film weeks, and friendship societies that characterized so much Soviet cultural outreach, Soviet film bureaucrats and filmmakers initiated several types of collective cinematic endeavors with representatives from countries inside and outside the Bloc. In part these activities renewed the quest for a successful film aesthetic to portray the ideals of socialism in a way attractive to mass audiences. Institutionally, the goals of these collective projects included creating occasions for artistic discussion across the Bloc, establishing a socialist film elite through education and formal association, cultivating sympathetic filmmakers in non-socialist countries, and setting up a transnational network of financial and technological support for like-minded filmmakers: in short, Soviet cinematic internationalism.  Three forms of Soviet cinematic outreach are explored here: the Moscow Film Festival as a highly visible international forum in which socialist films and filmmakers could be gathered, publicized, and projected to elite viewers and potential film importers; Soviet-sponsored annual meetings among socialist filmmakers as an occasion for discussion and critique of filmmaking among members of the Bloc; and co-produced Soviet feature films on the subject of the Great Patriotic War that attempted to frame the war narrative as one of socialist cooperation and solidarity. Overall, the Soviet cinematic efforts at festivals, collective meetings, and co-productions during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are well worth remembering in light of contemporary efforts at pan-European cultural projects and the great power narratives that compete on today’s screens.

 

// Dr. Marsha Siefert is Associate Professor of History at the Central European University, Budapest.  She specializes in transnational communications and cultural histories that include Russia and Eastern Europe. She has edited or co-edited five books, including Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union (1991) and Extending the Borders of Russian History (2003). Recent publications include chapters in Cold War Cultures (2012); Divided Dreamworlds (2012); Cold War Crossings (2014) and Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War (2016).  Since 2012 she has co-sponsored the Labor History Initiative at CEU, and is the editor of the book Labor in State Socialist Europe after 1945 currently under review.  In the spring of 2016 she was the Inaugural Fellow for Russia and Ballet at New York University, Center for Ballet & the Arts and the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia and is a Research Fellow of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, Ludwig Maximillian University-Munich and University of Regensburg. She currently co-edits the book series Historical Studies of Eastern Europe and Eurasia for CEU Press.

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