Designing Russian Cinema

This book highlights the significant role that production artists played when Russian cinema was still in its infancy. It uncovers Russian cinema's connections with other art forms, examining how production artists drew on both aesthetic traditions and modernist experiments in architecture, painting and theatre as they explored the new medium of cinema and its potential to engender new models of perception and forms of audience engagement. Drawing on set design sketches, archival documents and film-makers' memoirs, Eleanor Rees reveals how less-canonical films such as Behind the Screen (Kulisy ekrana, 1919) and Palace and Fortress (Dvorets i krepost ́, 1923), were remarkable from a design perspective, and also provides new readings of well-known films, such as Children of the Age (Deti veka, 1915) and Strike (Stachka, 1925). Rees brings to light information on significant but understudied figures such as Vladimir Egorov and Sergei Kozlovskii, and highlights the involvement of well-known figures such as Lev Kuleshov and Aleksandr Rodchenko. Unlike the majority of late Imperial directors and camera operators, many early-Russian production artists continued to work in cinema in the Soviet era and to draw on practices forged before the 1917 Revolution. In spanning the entire silent era, this book highlights the often overlooked continuities between the late-Imperial and early-Soviet periods of cinema, thus questioning traditional historical periodisations.

A Companion to Russian Cinema provides an exhaustive and carefully organised guide to the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia, of the Soviet era, as well as post-Soviet Russian cinema, edited by one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies. The most up-to-date and thorough coverage of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, which also effectively fills gaps in the existing scholarship in the field This is the first volume on Russian cinema to explore specifically the history of movie theatres, studios, and educational institutions The editor is one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies, and contributions come from leading experts in the field of Russian Studies, Film Studies and Visual Culture Chapters consider the arts of scriptwriting, sound, production design, costumes and cinematography Provides five portraits of key figures in Soviet and Russia film history, whose works have been somewhat neglected

The exhibition Stenberg Brothers: Constructing a Revolution in Soviet Design, organized by Christopher Mount, Assistant Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, is the first critical survey of the work of these two seminal figures in the history of twentieth-century graphic design.

Offers a survey of commercial products created in Russia during the 1960s and 1970s through photographs and essays that describe the inspiration, design, and consumer success of each product.

Film emerged in pre-Revolutionary Russia to become the 'most important of all arts' for the new Bolshevik regime and its propaganda machine. This text is a complete history from the beginning of film onwards and presents an engaging narrative of both the industry and its key films in the context of Russia's social and political history.

John Box had one of the most continuously productive design careers in British cinema, winning a record for Academy Awards and four BAFTAs. After learning his craft in the 1950s, he shot to fame with Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Directors from David Lean and Carol Reed to Norman Jewison and Michael Mann have valued his experience, as he brought `a vocabulary of life' to bear on the new challenges posed by each film. Whether creating Chaina in Wales for The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), revolutionary Russia in Spain for Dr. Zhivago (1965), or Dickensian London for Oliver! (1968), imagining the mythic past in First Knight (1995) or the future in Rollerball (1975). Box shaped screen worlds across five decades, helping to establish the traditions of British production design which continue today. His greatest wish was that his career should encourage others by example. Based on interviews with John Box and the co-operation of some of his key collaborators, this lavishly colour-illustrated book focuses on solutions to design problems and provides a unique insight into the production designer's role in the collaborative business of filmmaking. --Book Jacket.

This thesis explores the figure of the kino-khudozhnik [set designer] in late-Imperial and early-Soviet fiction cinema in the silent era. In comparison to other members of the film-making team, such as the camera operator, the director and the script-writer, the kino-khudozhnik is a relatively under-researched subject. Drawing on film-makers" memoirs, the contemporary cinema press and archival documents, this thesis examines the kino-khudozhnik"s contribution to the technical and creative sides of film-making in the period when cinema developed both as a new national industry and as a new art form in Russia. It thus considers cinema as a collaborative endeavour, an idea that held ideological significance in the early-Soviet era. It also provides an insight into the dynamics of studio film-making during the period, emphasising the role that available technology, the studio environment and professional partnerships, as much as the creative visions of individuals, played in shaping the evolution of film aesthetics. Many of the first kino-khudozhniki, who started their careers in Russian cinema in the 1910s, continued to work in the industry after its nationalisation in 1919. In examining the role of kino-khudozhniki across the late-Imperial and early-Soviet periods, this thesis highlights changes between these two eras, but it also emphasises continuities. In so doing, it questions traditional historical periodisations. In addition to examining the working practices of kino-khudozhniki, this thesis explores the sets they designed for films. Combining close visual analysis of a wide range of films and discussion of socio-cultural discourses of the period, it considers how representations of certain spaces "†the rural provinces, the domestic interior, the workplace, and artistic and performative arenas "†related to contemporary concerns about the material environment. In considering how filmmakers harnessed cinema"s ideological potential and used set design to promote certain ideas about the material environment, this thesis situates cinema as a key driver in shaping discourses about the built and object world in late-Imperial and early-Soviet Russia.

A landmark volume which explores the remarkable flowering of radical, visionary and experimental design for performance in Russia from 1913-1933.

A Companion to Russian Cinema provides an exhaustive and carefully organised guide to the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia, of the Soviet era, as well as post-Soviet Russian cinema, edited by one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies. The most up-to-date and thorough coverage of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, which also effectively fills gaps in the existing scholarship in the field This is the first volume on Russian cinema to explore specifically the history of movie theatres, studios, and educational institutions The editor is one of the most established and knowledgeable scholars in Russian cinema studies, and contributions come from leading experts in the field of Russian Studies, Film Studies and Visual Culture Chapters consider the arts of scriptwriting, sound, production design, costumes and cinematography Provides five portraits of key figures in Soviet and Russia film history, whose works have been somewhat neglected