Preview

RSUH/RGGU Bulletin: “Literary Teory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies”, Series

Advanced search

The space of women’s freedom in Azerbaijani cinema of the 1920–1930s. Between adat and Soviet ideology

https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2024-2-118-134

Abstract

Azerbaijani cinema is considered in the article as a phenomenon of national Art in the transit period on the cross of avant-garde trends of the 1920s and the ‘great’ Stalinist style of the first half of the 1930s. That time film directors of the republic like many others in the Soviet Union were focused on ‘the women’s issue’. The local specifics combined with the cross-cultural and interregional dialogue in cinema formed the common thematic tasks that were all across the Soviet Union but the same time, local and national specific emerged on the screens. The article studies four films that explore the ‘female space of freedom’ such as: “In the Name of God” by A.-M. Sharifzadeh,1925; “Sevil” by A. Bek-Nazarian,1929; “Ismet” by M. Mikayilov, 1934 and “Almaz” by A.-R. Kuliev and G. Braginsky, 1936. The approach provides an opportunity to uncover two issues: historical and methodological. On the one hand, the study of early Azerbaijani films allows to deeper the understanding of the social processes that took place in the region and the ways of its representation in Soviet cinema. On the other hand, the study demonstrates the general process of interdisciplinary migration of concepts and related theories, shows the phenomenon of national cinema through the prism of interdisciplinary ideas and concepts.

About the Authors

N. V. Kazurova
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Federation

Natalia V. Kazurova, Cand. of Sci. (History)

3, Universitetskaya Emb., Saint Petersburg, 199034



E. Yu. Trushkina
Russian State University for the Humanities
Russian Federation

Ekaterina Yu. Trushkina, Cand. of Sci. (Philosophy)

6., Miusskaya Sq., Moscow, 125047



References

1. Belodubrovskaya, M. (2020), Ne po planu: Kinematografiya pri Staline [Not according to plan. Filmmaking under Stalin], NLO, Moscow, Russian.

2. Bulgakova, O.L. (2000), Sovetskoe kino v poiskakh “obshchei modeli” [Soviet cinema in search of a “common model”], Akademicheskii proekt, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

3. Bulgakova, O.L. (2002), “Soviet beauties in Stalin’s sinema”, in Sovetskoe bogatstvo: Stat’i o kul’ture, literature i kino [Soviet Wealth. Articles on culture, literature and cinema], Akademicheskii proekt, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

4. Bulgakova, O.L. (2021), Fabrika zhestov [The factory of gestures], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, Russia.

5. Dashkova, T.Yu. (1999), “Visual representation of the female body in the Soviet mass culture of the 30’s”, Logos, vol. 21, no. 11/12, pp. 131–155.

6. Germanova, I.G. (1989), “The thing in the artistic system of film], in Chto takoe yazyk kino [What is the language of cinema?], Iskusstvo, Moscow, USSR.

7. Giunter, Kh. (2000), Arkhetipy sovetskoi kul’tury [Archetypes of Soviet culture], Akademicheskii proekt, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

8. Gribakina, T.E. (2020), “The construction of the image of a woman in Soviet cinema of the first half of the 20th century”, Filosofskaya mysl’, no. 5, pp. 50–60.

9. Kazurova, N.V. (2022), “The clash of Soviet propaganda and the traditional way of life in Azerbaijani cinema of the late 1920s – mid-1930s (case of I. Orujova’s roles in ‘Sevil’ and ‘Almaz’)”, Istoricheskii kur’er, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 116–129.

10. Khloponina, O.O. (2017), “Transformation of female imagery in Soviet cinema in the 1920s – 1930s”, Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie, no. 2, pp. 140–151.

11. Knekht, N.P. (2020), “The evolution of the image of the Soviet woman in Russian cinema. History and modernity”, Ekonomicheskie i sotsial’no-gumanitarnye issledovaniya, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 153–159.

12. Levchenko, Ya.S. (2016), “Counterpoint to the mainstream. Sound control in Soviet cinema of the early 1930s”, in Russkaya intellektual’naya revolyutsiya 1910–1930-kh gg. [Russian intellectual revolution of the 1910s – 1930s.], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, Russia.

13. Mikhailin, V.Yu. and Beliaeva, G.A. (2020), Skrytyi uchebnyi plan: antropologiya sovetskogo shkol’nogo kino nachala 1930 – serediny 1960-kh gg. [Hidden curriculum. Anthropology of Soviet school cinema in the early 1930’s – mid-1960’s], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, Russia.

14. Morozova, E.A. (2009), “The semantics of female sexual attractiveness in Soviet culture of the 1930’s”, Izvestia: Herzen university journal of humanities & sciences, no. 117, pp. 341–345.

15. Neminushchii, A.N. (2016), “|The category of femininity in Soviet cinema in the 1930’s”, Vestnik Pskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Seriya “Sotsial’no-gumanitarnye nauki”, no. 3, pp. 117–122.

16. Plungyan, N.V. (2022), Rozhdenie sovetskoi zhenshchiny. Rabotnica, krest’yanka, letchitsa, “byvshaya” i drugie v iskusstve 1917–1939 godov [The birth of a Soviet woman. Worker, peasant woman, pilot, “former” and others in the art of 1917–1939], Muzei sovremennogo iskusstva “Garazh”, Moscow, Russia.

17. Shimonova, N.V. (2020), “The image of a woman in Soviet cinema of 1930–1960s. The issue of a free will and a personal choice”, Telekinet, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 35–38.

18. Smagina, S.A. (2017), “The image of the ‘new woman’ in Soviet cinema of the 1930s. On the example of the films ‘Captured Land’ and ‘Woman’ ”, Istoricheskie, filosofskie, politicheskie i yuridicheskie nauki, kul’turologiya i iskusstvovedenie. Voprosy teorii i praktiki, vol. 83, no. 9, pp. 169–173.

19. Smagina, S.A. (2019), “Novaya zhenshchina” v sovetskom kinematografe 1920-kh gg. kak fenomen” [“New Woman” in Soviet Cinema of the 1920s as a Phenomenon], Vestnik slavyanskikh kul’tur, vol. 51. pp. 257–266.

20. Torburg, M.R. and Dobronravov, S.V. (2021), “The evolution of the image of a leader-woman in Soviet cinema”, Zhenshchina v rossiiskom obshchestve, no. 3, pp. 127–134.

21. Tynyanov, Yu.N. (2016), “About the cinema basics”, in Poetika kino. Teoreticheskie raboty 1920-h gg. [Poetics of Cinema. Theoretical works of the 1920s], Akademicheskii proekt, Alma mater, Moscow, Russia.

22. Veitsman, E.M. (1978), Ocherki filosofii kino [Philosophical essays on cinema], Iskusstvo, Moscow, USSR.


Review

For citations:


Kazurova N.V., Trushkina E.Yu. The space of women’s freedom in Azerbaijani cinema of the 1920–1930s. Between adat and Soviet ideology. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin: “Literary Teory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies”, Series. 2024;(2):118-134. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2024-2-118-134

Views: 260


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.


ISSN 2073-6355 (Print)