Russian Film Symposium at the University of Pittsburgh

[Padunov, Vladimir]

The sixteenth annual Russian Film Symposium, "Gendering Genre," will be held on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh from Monday 5 May through Saturday 10 May 2014, with evening screenings at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Melwood Screening Room.

While Russian cinema attendance today cannot rival the annual 16 per capita visits of Soviet years, it is greatly improved since the first fifteen years of the Russian Federation, when attendance dropped below one annual visit.  Today younger Russians (18 to 30) go to films seven or more times a year, while older viewers (30 to 50) slightly less than five.  Film production now exceeds 100 films a year, a substantial increase from the "cine-anemia" of 1991 to 1996, when as few as 34 films were produced.

What about the films themselves?  If five to seven years ago a typical multiplex would screen fewer Russian films than foreign ones (European, Asian, and American), by 2012 the range had narrowed: the only "national cinemas" present on screens were Russian and American, with attendance frequently higher for Russian films.  For the past four years in Russia, the top three box-office hits (and therefore profits) have been domestically produced films.  Ironically, during this same period, the flourishing film industry has narrowed its broad generic range-gangster films, buddy films, road movies, historical epics, comedies, melodramas, etc.-to an inventory largely dominated by romantic comedies and gritty dramas.  Romantic comedy finds its frequent setting in the capitals (Moscow and St. Petersburg), while the gritty drama is more often set in the heartland, the provinces, and the periphery.

This binary of the two genres is paralleled by the gender binary of target audiences: the romantic comedies are clearly marked as being "woman friendly," while the gritty dramas flex their masculine muscles.  If the former genre is structured around the first meaning of the verb "to cleave"―that is, to bind or bond (exclusively female to male)―the latter adheres to the second meaning of the verb―to sever or separate (not just male from female, but parent from child, individual from collective).  As much as issues of intimacy and emotional states lie at the center of Russian romantic comedies, alienation and explosive physical violence are at the core of the gritty dramas.

This year's films include: Boris Khlebnikov's Till Night Do Us Part (2012), Gennadii Ostrovskii's Dumpling Brothers (2013), Aleksei Balabanov's Me Too (2012), Ivan Vyrypaev's Delhi Dance ((2012), Kira Muratova's Eternal Homecoming (2012), Natasha Merkulova and Aleksei Chupov's Intimate Parts (2013) Larisa Sadilova's She (2013), Aleksei Mizgirev's The Convoy (2012), Sergei Taramaev and Liubov' L'vova's A Winter Journey (2013), Aleksei Fedorchenko's Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (2012), Ekaterina Telegina's Break-Up Habit (2013), and Vasilii Sigarev's Living (2011).

Additional information at http://www.rusfilm.pitt.edu/



___________________________________________
Vladimir Padunov
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of Pittsburgh
427 Cathedral of Learning
Pittsburgh, PA 15260

Phone: 412-624-5713                      FAX: 412-624-9714

Russian Film Symposium      http://www.rusfilm.pitt.edu


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