kružok - Mark Lipovetsky

Mark Lipovetsky, the chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at Columbia, will present his work-in-progress––a two-part chapter Films (Not) About the War that deals with the contemporary cinematic production in Russia.

The chapter juxtaposes two–rather distinct––types of films: films about recent history and films about vampires. In the first section, Lipovetsky situates his study against the backdrop of the overwhelmingly retrospective and nostalgic nature of contemporary Russian cinema and explores films that openly criticize the Soviet past, specifically, its Stalinist and Thaw periods. He asks: Do these films succeed in breaking the spell of retrotopia? Do they undermine restorative manipulations of the past? Do they represent a counter-current going against the mainstream?

The second section discusses the hybridization of noir and Gothic conventions in Russian cinema and television series. As Lipovetsky suggests, the neo-noir genre has played a crucial role in sculpting and solidifying cultural imaginations and historical mythologies that would be confronted by the catastrophic events following February 24, 2022. His main question, then, is about the political efficacy of this cinematic production: Did these miniseries prepare their viewers to accept the war against Ukraine and approve a new wave of political repressions within Russia or, on the contrary, did they lay the groundwork for resistance or other affective responses to the events that took place later?

Kathleen L. Mitchell-Fox, a PhD candidate in Slavic, will start of the discussion.

Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (OWNER)

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