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# System prepended metadata

title: Notes for Soviet Film Course & DesignLab

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# Notes for Soviet Film Course & DesignLab

Course description:
The course introduces students to some of the most influential films in the history of cinema, such as the dynamic and politically-charged montage movies of Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, and their avant-garde contemporaries of the 1920s and 1930s, coming from Russia as well as other parts of the Soviet Union. We will examine early Russian melodramas, the film culture of the Bolshevik Revolution, the exotic and eccentric movie-land fashioned by Russian emigres in Paris and Berlin, and the strictures of Stalin-era Socialist Realism. S**tudents will learn about the analysis of film style, from framing to editing to acting, as well as the political and social contexts of filmmaking and film-going**. Films to be considered include: The Cameraman's Revenge, Child of the Big City, The Man with the Movie Camera, The Battleship Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible, etc. Readings (all in English) include classical film theory from the epoch, and recent scholarship

Final project description: 10-12 pp. research paper. If you are into film production, you can instead pursue a creative project. Talk to me about it beforehand.

Selected films:
- Evgenii Bauer, [Child of the Big City](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1HfcMJTZPg)
- Evgenii Bauer, [Daydreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXvP9VtQsnk)
- Władysław Starewicz,[The Cameraman's Revenge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyGGwxkL1hM)
- Yakov Protazanov, [The Queen of Spades](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUI9YGh3jGg)
- Lev Kuleshov, [The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqz53CnWZJA)
- Sergei Eisenstein, [The Battleship Potemkin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_bkBbrdyyw)
- Mikhail Kalatozov, [Nail in the Boot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgO3vvvBS80)
- Dziga Vertov, [The Eleventh Year](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSve8HNjZ4Y)
- Dziga Vertov, [Man with a Movie Camera](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpJpEO8OE-s)

