News and Events

2011/12

Friday 11 November, 2-4pm

Presentation by Sarah Turner, Vladislav Rjeoutski and Derek Offord of their AHRC funded project: French in Russia,

Room G99A, 19 Woodland Road

 

Friday 9 December, 2pm

Lilya Kaganovsky, University of Illinois: "Electric Speech: Dziga Vertov, Esfir Shub and the Technologies of Sound"

Room G99A, 19 Woodland Road

2010/11

Friday 26 November 2010

The first Staff-Student seminar of the academic year 2010-11 will take place on Friday 26 November from 3.00-5.00 p.m. in room G65 (ground floor at the front of 15 Woodland Road).

The speakers will be:

4 November at 5:15

Verdon-Smith Room, Institute for Advanced Studies

Sergei Kapterev, IAS Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor from the Research Institute of Film Art (NIIK), Moscow

Soviet-American relations in Stalin’s film industry

Dr Sergei Kapterev is a Senior Researcher at the Research Institute of Film Art (Moscow, Russia) and Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor in Bristol from 1-7 November 2010. He received his first degree in Linguistics in Moscow before completing his MA and then PhD in Cinema Studies (2005) at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. His doctoral thesis on Post-Stalinist Cinema and the Russian Intelligentsia, 1953-1960: Strategies of Self-Representation, De-Stalinization, and the National Cultural Tradition was published in 2008.

Sergei Kapterev’s current archival research focuses on Soviet cinema of the Stalinist era, and especially on the Soviet-American relations in the film industry during this period – a time which was characterised by a partial ban on the import of American films into Soviet Russia and considerable limitations on Soviet film exports to the US; and, simultaneously, by diverse interactions between the two film industries and cultures. In his talk he will explore issues of exchange between the two countries that continued well into the Cold War era.

Sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Studies. For further information contact Birgit Beumers

Monday 1 November, 2:15

Brandt Cinema, Department of Drama, Film and Television

Sergei Kapterev (Research Institute of Film Art NIIK, Moscow) and IAS Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor

Mikhail Kalatozov: The Beginning

Sergei Kapterev has conducted extensive research in Russian archives and recently discovered two extant reels of Mikhail Kalatozov’s first film, which he will screen, alongside fragments of other little known works produced by Kalatozov in Georgia, during his lecture. Mikhail Kalatozov, best known for his Golden Palm winner The Cranes are Flying (1957), actually started his career in Georgia in 1923, at the Tbilisi-based film trust Goskinprom. He worked in a variety of peripheral jobs before making documentary films, including the well-known Salt for Svanetia (1930). 

The two rediscovered reels of Kalatozov’s feature debut, Their Kingdom (1928), provide a glimpse into his methodology of documentary filmmaking. The film’s structure was based on the contrast between the inefficiency and cynicism of the Georgian bourgeoisie and the progress made by Georgia under the Soviet regime. The rediscovered reels review the relationship between Georgia’s ousted “bourgeois” government and Western powers. The presentation will also include examples of Kalatozov’s work as cinematographer and fragments from The Nail in the Boot (1931), a banned agitprop feature which stood at the source of the Soviet genre of “defence film”. Dr Kapterev has recently presented his findings at Orphan Film Symposium in New York and at Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

MATI SAMEPO / Ikh tsarstvo / Their Kingdom (Goskinprom Gruzii, Georgian SSR, 1928); Directed and edited by Mikhail Kalatozishvili [Kalatozov] and Nutsa Gogoberidze; DoP: Mikhail Kalatozishvili; Running Time 15 minutes

27 October 2010, 20:00

SPECIAL SCREENING at the WATERSHED: Alexei Popogrebsky: How I Ended This Summer

The winner of three Silver Bears at Berlin (to Pavel Kostomarov for cinematography and Puskepalis and Dobrygin for Best Actors) will come straight from the London International Film Festival for a preview to Bristol’s Watershed, prior to its UK release, introduced by the director and followed by a Q&A session. The event is organised by Dr Birgit Beumers, University of Bristol.

This psychological thriller follows two mismatched men working at a weather station on a Russian island inside the Arctic circle where the sun never sets. Sergei (Puskepalis) is gruff and serious, a seasoned pro who barely tolerates young Pavel (Dobrygin), a bored, foolish new intern, as they spend their days monitoring the island's radioactivity. When Pavel picks up a message he daren't pass on to unpredictable Sergei he descends into a spiral of fear, lies and deceit. A chilling, terrifying and beautifully shot drama about isolation and human dependence. (Watershed brochure)

29 August 2010

'Czech Literary Genius' on Radio 3. Rajendra Chitnis will be discussing 'Czech Genius' as part of the Proms Literary Festival on BBC Radio 3 at 20.05 this coming Sunday, 29 August. The programme is billed enticingly as: 'An examination of Czech genius from Kafka and Capek to Hrabal and beyond. Rana Mitter and his guests Rajendra Chitnis and James Hawes explode the stereotype of a nation enchanted by erotic surrealism and existential gloom.'

2009/10

Staff-Postgraduate Seminar: Friday 14 May 2010

Jeremy Pilch (first-year PhD student under my supervision, and AHRC studentship holder): 'Vladimir Solov'ev's "Lectures on Divine Humanity" and Maximus the Confessor'. Jeremy will speak on this subject, to which he has devoted his first year of research, in the context of his larger project on deification in the work of Vladimir Solov'ev.

Professor Derek Offord: 'Nation-building in Karamzin's "History of the Russian State"'. Derek's 'A History of Russian Thought', co-edited with William Leatherbarrow, has just come out with CUP: this will be an occasion to celebrate this significant achievement and inspect the book!

The seminar will take place from 3.00-5.30pm in Room G59, 13 Woodland Road

Guest Lecture on Estonian Cinema: 29 April 2010

(Sponsored by BIRTHA): Industry and imagery of Estonian cinema from early days to recent times by Eva Näripea, Estonian Academy of Art at Thursday 29 April at 4pm in G113 (back of 21 Woodland Rd)

Eva Näripea is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Art History, Estonian Academy of Arts, working on her dissertation on representations of (urban) spaces in Estonian narrative cinema of the post-World War II period. She is also a part-time researcher at the research group of cultural and literary theory at Estonian Literary Museum and the head of the publishing department of Estonian Academy of Arts. In 2007 she led the organizing team of the international conference of film history Via Transversa: Lost Cinema of the Former Eastern Bloc (Tallinn, Estonia) and co-edited the proceedings of the conference in 2008. She has recently co-edited a special issue of KinoKultura (www.kinokultura.com) on Estonian cinema.

Russian Theatre Festival in Soho: 1-4 February 2010

Russian Theatre Festival in Soho : Organised by Sputnik Theatre. 1-4 February 2010

Professor Robert Edelman (University of California, San Diego): 22 January 2010

Friday 22 January 2010 ::: 3pm ::: Room G65, 15 Woodland Road

"How Football Explains Soviet Life: Spartak Moscow, the "People's" Team"

Professor Robert Edelman is a professor of Russian history and the history of sport at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been teaching since 1972, when he received his doctorate from Columbia University. He has also taught at UCLA. He was a former sports-writer and radio announcer. He has consulted on documentaries for HBO, PBS, ESPN, and CBS at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games.

The event is sponsored by BIRTHA.

Andrei Khrzhanovsky at Seventy: 18 November 2009

Watershed – Encounters Festival

Wednesday 18 November 2009, 6pm

The screening will be introduced by Andrei Khrzhanovsky and followed by a Q&A session. The programme is presented by Birgit Beumers, University of Bristol. 

The Russian animator Andrei Khrzhanovsky celebrates his 70th birthday on 30 November. In honour of his contribution to the art of animation, and coinciding with the world tour of his first feature A Room and a Half, which screens at the London International Film Festival, Bristol’s Encounters presents a unique retrospective of Khrzhanovsky’s early animated films from the Soviet period, including the once-banned Glass Harmonica (1968). These films capture the essence of his art, exposing the threat to humanism in the modern world.

Andrei Khrzhanovsky studied at the Film Institute VGIK in Moscow with Lev Kuleshov. Since 1962 he has worked at the Soviet animation studio Soyuzmultfilm, and in 1993 he organised his own studio, Shar. Since 1982 he has been teaching on the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors. He is the son of the painter Yuri Khrzhanovsky (1905-87), who worked with Russian avant-garde painters and whose canvasses were shown at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg in 2008. Khrzhanovsky has collaborated with contemporary painters such as Vladimir Yankilevsky, Ulo Sooster, and Sergei Barkhin. Khrzhanovsky often makes his figures move against the backdrop of images drawn by well-known masters, including the poets Alexander Pushkin and Joseph Brodsky, but also Federico Fellini. He was twice awarded the State Prize (1986 and 1998) and is a Merited Artist of the Russian Federation (1992).

Russian Staff-Postgraduate Seminar: Friday 6 November 2009

The first Russian staff-postgraduate seminar of the session will be held on Friday, 6 November from 3pm to 5.30pm in room B54, 15 Woodland Road. There will be two speakers:

Dr Birgit Beumers (Reader in Russian): 'How to Discover the World's First Puppet Animation';

Nadia Taylor (studying for an MPhil in sociolinguistics): 'Language and Identity in the Russian Community in Bristol'.

All are welcome!