Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

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Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
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Shub, Esfir (1894-1959)

• Kino za 20 (1940)
• Spain (1939)
• Today (1929)
• Leo Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicholas II (1928)
• The Great Way (1927)
• The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927)

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Lesser Known Films

• Segodnja (Today or Tubes and tractors, 1929/1930)
  
• Komsomol, Patron of Electrification (1932) - 1st
  Soviet film with direct sound.
• Moskva stroit meter (the Meter at night, 1934)

• Strana sovetov (the country of soviets, 1937)
• Lico vraga (the face of the enemy, 1941)
• Po your storonu Araksa (Towards the Arax, 1947)
• Ot cistogo serdca (the pure heart, 1949)

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Bibliography

• Petríc, Vlada. "Esther Shub Cinema is My Life."
  Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3.4 (Fall 1978)
  429-56.
• "Esther Shub's Unrealized Project." Quarterly
  Review of Film Studies 3.4 (Fall 1978) 429-56.

• Roberts, Graham. "Esfir Shub a suitable case for
  treatment." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
  Television 11.2 (1991) 149-159.
• Martin Stollery "Eisenstein, Shub and the gender
  of the author as producer." Film History 141
  (2002), S.87-99

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Shub cont.

• theatre director Meyerhold poet Mayakovsky 
• joined Goskino film company - Dziga Vertov
• belief in film's ability to reveal aspects of
  reality not visible to the naked eye

• re-editor of foreign films for Soviet
  distribution
• Dr. Mabuse (Lang, 1922)
• created the genre of the historical compilation
  documentary

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Compilation Film

• Montage
• juxtaposing fragments from diverse sources -
  archives, home movies, newsreels
• thousands of meters of film
• reconstituting the facts as faithfully as
  possible
• aesthetic and political coherence - Marxist
  reading of History

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Compilation/Montage

• kind of motion picture based largely, if not
  entirely, on pre-existing footage, extracts from
  archives or some other source, and reused to
  create a new discourse
• Jay Leyda, Films Beget Films Compilation Films
  from Propaganda to Drama (Hill Wang, 1971)

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• white-glove cinematic process of the production
  of meaning
• Essential to Soviets
• Editing technique par excellence of the factory
  - allegory of the artistic avant-gardes -
  constructivism and productivism

• Origins of compilation in Lev Kuleshovs
  experiments in creative geography

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Shubs contribution

• introduced one of the patterns characteristic of
  the genre historical chronicle reconstructed by
  assembly of images taken from newsreels
  reportages

• search, identification and restoration of
  documents
• Juxtaposition
• Eg. Tsars home movies vs. peasant suffering

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Shub cont.

• Cinema as constructivist
• Artists as workers, engineers, technology
• industrial materials - glass, steel, plastic
• Focus on basic elements
• design for masses
• contribute towards a better future

• from existent film, construct new cinematic
  discourse cf engineer w. building or machine
• Factualism - Ontological authenticity
• intertitles

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Constructivism cont.

• "the Constructivists sought an art of order,
  which would reject the past (the old order which
  had culminated in World War I) and lead to a
  world of more understanding, unity, and peace."

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Genre

• documentary that narrates the voice-over
  becomes one of its common features
• Staple documentary genre since TV
• Industry (Rafferty) - repertoires, stock film
  libraries, data bases

• Atomic Café (1982)
• ephemeral films- educational, corporate or
  institutional production, industrial or
  promotional documentaries, advertising
  propaganda, out-takes leftovers

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• Emile de Antonio (1920-1989)
• Point of Order, 1963 re. Joseph McCarthy
• Rush to Judgment, 1967 - assassination of JFK
• In the Year of the Pig, 1969 - Vietnam War
• Millhouse a White Comedy, 1972 - Nixon

• Marcel Ophuls (b. 1927)
• The Troubles We've Seen A History of Journalism
  in Wartime (1994)
• Hotel Terminus The Life and Times of Klaus
  Barbie (1988)
• The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

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Genre Variation

• private film, amateur production, home movies
• historical trends opted for studying private life
  - nameless individuals faceless masses rather
  than dominant classes larger-than-life
  personages

• amateur film-making
• theoretical historiographical explorations
• Alan Berliner - The Family Album (1986) - mosaic
  of experiences and habits of typical American
  family 1920s 1950s

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Nonfiction discourse

• Review iconic indexical repn
• connotative symbolic uses - same image can
  have diverse meanings
• understanding images only thru context in
  meaningful sequence
• complex web of signification nonfiction film
  discourse

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Discourse Projected World

• discourse presentation
• distinguish bet what how of rep - cf. narrative
  theory (story telling of story)
• projected world what
• Nonfiction projected world model of actual
  world
• narrative / exclusively fictional

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Projected world

• events, settings, characters of world
• Why this concept mediation bet discourse
  actual world?
• Nonfiction film can be mistaken, misleading
  even tho it purports accuracy (truth claims,
  assertions)
• But think of it as model so can measure
  accuracy etc

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Discourse

• purposive organization of sounds images
• Means by wh projected world (story events)
  communicated
• Principle strategies selection, order, emphasis,
  voice

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• Discourse selects elements, orders their
  presentation, emphasizes certain representations
  over others, manifests metaphorical voice
  (POV)

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