Soviet Cinema. A. Tarkovsky

1
Soviet Cinema. A. Tarkovsky

• By Julia Kristanciuk
• Sources
• Bird, Robert. Andrei Rublev.
• Johnson, Vida. The Films of Andrey Tarkovsky. A
  Visual Fugue.

2
An Overview of the Soviet Film Industry

• Cinema is state-owned and state-controlled
  monopoly
• centralized bureaucratic structure
• socialist realism as the only accepted method
  in the arts

3
Centralized bureaucratic structure

• About 40 studios in all fifteen Soviet Republics
• Distribution
• Professional education
• Film research institutes
• Trade publications and critical journals
• The central film archives
• The Central Film Base
• A print duplicating film factory in Moscow
• A script studio
• The Theater of Film Actor
• A symphony orchestra

4
socialist realism portraying reality in its
revolutionary development

• Simple style and narrative improbable plots
• Clear ideological message
• Strong Communist heroes, schematic and highly
  idealized
• Authors who rejected socialist realism ended up
  writing for the drawer
• Ideology took precedence over economic concerns?
  banning of films at the expenses of financial
  losses

5
The Official Structure of the Soviet Cinema
Industry
6
The Official Structure of the Cinema Industry
Goskino

• Chairman of the centralized governmental agency
• Governing board
• Each member of the governing board was the head
  of a certain department (e.g. Production of
  Feature films)
• The editor of the journal Iskusstvo Kino
• A deputy chair representing the KGB

7
The Official Structure of the Cinema Industry
Studios

• Editorial department (5-10 editors)
• Production teams
• Each team had its own editorial board (20
  writers, scriptwriters, and critics) and artistic
  council (writers, critics, actors, and cameramen)
• Every film script had to pass through all the
  stages within the studio as well as in Goskino

8
Ingmar Bergman

• My discovery of Tarkovskys first film was like
  a miracle. Suddenly I found myself at the door of
  a room, the keys to which, until then, had never
  been given to me.
• Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who
  invented a new language, true to the language of
  film.

9
Andrei Rublev (film background)

• The extraordinary success of Ivans Childhood,
  Tarkovskys first film.
• 1964-1966 the film was officially screened in
  1971
• Who was Andrei Rublev?

10

• (1360-1430)
• Mongol-Tatar domination in Russia
• Between 1551 and the twentieth century Rublevs
  work fell into oblivion
• 1950s Rublev is suddenly recognized as the
  outstanding Russian artist

11
Andrei Rublev Soviet Criticism

• The film is disappointing
• The film fails to provide an active socialist
  hero
• The film is different from the script
• The film is too long
• The film is too naturalistic
• The film plays down the historical significance
  of the people and their stoic heroism

12
Andrei Rublev Reception in the West

• The film was invited by the Cannes festival and
  received the prestigious International Critics
  Prize
• The film was seen as allegory of Stalinism and
  a defense of intellectual, political, and
  religious freedom
• East European critics saw a belief in the purity
  of Russian soul as a central theme of the film