Russ,East European,Eurasian St 275 - Avant-Garde as Lifestyle: Cinema and Socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
Cinema/Soviet Union/ E. Europe
Spring
2024
01
4.00
Thomas Lee Roberts
TU TH 10:50 AM - 12:05 PM
Smith College
RES-275-01-202403
Wright Weinstein
troberts@smith.edu
Explores the avant-garde film traditions of Eastern and Central Europe, including works from the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The course focuses on how avant-garde filmmakers engaged with the socialist project in the USSR and Eastern Bloc, and its call for new forms, sites and life practices. The course investigates how avant-garde cinema represents everyday life amidst the public and private spaces of socialism. In approaching the relationship between cinema and space, students consider examples of architecture (Constructivist, Functionalist, Brutalist), as well as theoretical writings by and about the avant-garde. Conducted in English, no prerequisites.