Film Series: The Everyday Absurd: Laughter during Socialism: "Die Pokrovsky Tore"

Die Pokrovsky Tore (Покровские ворота)
1982, USSR
Mikhail Kozakov
The one of the most legendary Soviet comedies pictures the lives of the tenants of the Moscow's communal apartment (komunalka) in the 1950s: Kostik, who is a college student, lives with his aunt while studying; Arkady Velyurov who is a performing artist; Khobotovs, who are a divorced couple; and Sava, who is Margarita Khobotov's new fiancé. All these people live in one apartment and their lives are constantly intertwined.

The film series “Everyday Absurd: Laughter during Socialism” aim to show and deconstruct the everyday life and humour in in socialist societies through their own representation and language. Five movies from five different countries reveal different aspects of the everyday life during socialism. The film series starts with the Bulgarian bureaucratic and statistical absurdities, continues with a guided tour of the corruption, bureaucracy, bribery and black market in Poland, followed by insights into the common life in the Soviet Komunalka and the Czechoslovak educational system for adults, ending with the conspiracy drama comedy from Yugoslavia. Each of these everyday life “cases” has its own significance and context in the very same way as the movies had their own particular destiny in the given socialist societies – some were censured, other became part of the pop culture of the time and got to be perceived as “classics”, third were approved by the communist parties elites etc.

The goal of the films series is to approach humour in its political and social context from an interdisciplinary perspective. Comedy is here not only undestood as a genre but also perceived as a critical and in the same way handy tool of understanding particular societies and cultures, including those from the socialist era. As Kessel argues, “using humor as a category of analysis allows us to see not only how humour entertained but also how it worked as a cultural practice that both organized social order and revealed shared assumptions about society and politics” (Kessel, 2012:3-21).

The movies will be followed by discussions.