Russian Film Symposium 2009

[Padunov, Vladimir]

The eleventh annual Russian Film Symposium, "The New 'Positive Hero': Masculinity and Genre in Recent Russian Cinema," will take place between 4 and 9 May 2009 at the University of Pittsburgh and the Melwood Screening Room of Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
At the center of this year's Symposium is an examination of the interrelationship of two recent, seemingly unrelated developments in the Russian film industry: the emergence of genre cinema and the reconfiguration of masculinity on-screen.  Russian screens for the past decade have presented viewers with an increasingly wide array of genre films: adaptations, historical and costume dramas, melodramas, romantic comedies, buddy films, re-makes, war films, social satires, etc.  While the term "genre film" is still treated with caution by most Russian directors (some of whom vehemently deny they have ever made a genre film), the overwhelming body of evidence points to the fact that Russian cinema has moved away from the art-house/festival circuit to a domestic, viewer-friendly format with embedded predictability.
This emergence of genre cinema, in turn (or rather in tandem), has resulted in a more nuanced representation of masculinity on-screen, marking a radical shift away from the criminal- or vigilante-as-hero that dominated the Yeltsin-era of television and cinema.  Genre conventions are quite inflexible (something that Russian film directors are still struggling to implement): comedies, for example, tend to eschew violence, romantic comedies rarely include a negative protagonist, etc.  As a consequence, the representation of masculinity (as with all characterization) has to be tailored to the genre.
In his speech at the1998 plenary congress of the Russian Union of Filmmakers, Nikita Mikhalkov, then the newly elected President of the Union, screened a series of clips from Russian films since the fall of the Soviet Union.  All of the clips featured scenes of violence, cruelty, and criminality―the defining features both of the gangster-action film, which had held a virtual monopoly in the Russian film industry throughout Yeltsin's presidency, and of the aesthetics of chernukha.  Much ridiculed at the time was Mikhalkov's closing appeal for a "positive cinema," one that would create a new Russian national hero on-screen and provide a new social model to be emulated by the people-a modified and updated version of the Soviet mandate for a "positive hero."
The Symposium will screen and discuss twelve recent Russian films: Aleksei Balabanov's Morphia (2008), Bakur Bakuradze's Shultes   (2008), Mikhail Kalatozishvili's Wild Field (2008), and Nikita Mikhalkov's 12 (2007) at Pittsburgh Filmmakers; Aleksei German Jr.'s Paper Soldier (2008), Sergei Mokritskii's Four Ages of Love (2008), Vladimir Kott's The Fly (20008), Aleksandr Proshkin's Live and Remember (2008), Katia Shagalova's Once Upon a Time in the Provinces (2008), Karen Shakhnazarov's The Vanished Empire (2008), Andrei Khrzhanovskii's Room and a Half (2009), and Aleksei Uchitel''s Captive on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.


___________________________________________
Vladimir Padunov
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Associate Director, Film Studies Program
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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