Kinocultura: on Russian, Russo-Soviet, Eastern European, & Central Asian cinemas & television

Excerpt from the beginning of Nastroishchik/The Tuner (Kira Muratova, Russia/Ukraine, 2004)

Muratova’s tight and intricate narrative is punctuated by familiar cinematic devices, red herrings, and pranks immediately identifiable—even beyond cinema production—with Muratova’s sui generic style. [F]irst, her inclusion of a “cultural intermezzo” by an amateur artist-enthusiast.  [...]  In The Tuner, this device takes the form of a girl singer-songwriter performing on public transport and a number of other charmingly inept musicians (a clarinetist, two tuba players, random, elderly singers, and Andrei’s spontaneous “Uzbek” improvisation).  This is the utopian dimension of Muratova’s creative act: irredeemably unprofessional, yet utterly complete, self-sufficient in itself, the flawless conjuration of an inner hallucination. Nancy Condee, 'Kira Muratova, The Tuner [Nastroishchik] (2004)', Kinocultura, Issue 7  January 2005

(See also Emma Widdis: Muratova's Clothes, Muratova's Textures, Muratova's Skin Kinocultura, Issue 8, April 2005; Acquarello, 'The Tuner, 2004', Strictly Film School, July 27, 2006)

Film Studies For Free was alerted yesterday by David Hudson at The Auteurs Daily that the April 2010 issue of Kinocultura, the Open Access journal of New Russian Cinema, had just been published online.  

This journal has been appearing since July 2003, and that simple fact makes for a true wealth of freely accessible scholarly resources. With its editorial board of leading scholars in this field, Kinocultura is quite simply one of the best film studies e-journals, with its incredibly wide-ranging scholarly articles alongside wonderful film and book reviews and dossiers/reports/roundtable discussions/videos.  

Below, FSFF has copied and pasted in the index of all full-length articles and interviews published by the journal to date. Here also is a list of Kinocultura's special issues on particular countries:#1 Central Asia (2004); #2 Poland (2005); #3 Slovakia (2005); #4 Czech Rep. (2006); #5 Bulgaria (2006); #6 Romania (2007); #7 Hungary (2008); #8 Serbia (2009); #9 Ukraine (2009); #10 Estonia (2010). Note that there are forthcoming issues on Kazakhstan and Croatia.
 
Those of you interested in Russian and Soviet film studies should also know about the following great, online bibliography, too: University of Pittsburgh Russian and Soviet Cinema.

Kinocultura - Issue 28: April 2010

• Mariya Y. Boston: "Speaking in Tongues: Poetic Language in Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun"

• Andrey Shcherbenok: "Asymmetric Warfare: The Vision of the Enemy in American and Soviet Cold War Cinemas"

Festival Report

• Birgit Beumers: " Restoring Images: Belye Stolby 2010"

Issue 27: January 2010

• David MacFadyen: Cinematic Abuse as Self-Affirmation: Russian Video Mash-ups, Illegal Social Networking, and the Rise of Bekmambetov’s “Office Plankton”

• Maria Vinogradova: Amateur Cinema in the Soviet Union and the Leningrad of Film Amateurs in the 1970s-1980s

Festival Reports

• Dar'ia Borisova: Kinoshok 2009: The Expiring Principle of Soviet Brotherhood

AAASS 2009 Roundtable on Young Kazakh Cinema

• Birgit Beumers: Waves, old and new, in Kazakh Cinema

• Jane Knox-Voina: Young Kazakh Filmmakers:  New “New Wave” on the Road

• Stephen M. Norris: The Gifts of History: Young Kazakh Cinema and the Past

• Eugénie Zvonkine: “Kazakhstan Rules the World:” Satybaldy Narymbetov’s Mustafa Shokai (2008) and the Rewriting of History

Issue 26: October 2009

• Evgenii Margolit: “Monumental Sculptures in Soviet Cinema of the 1920s”

Festival Reports

• Birgit Beumers: “A Return to Folklore?—Suzdal 2009”

• Birgit Beumers, “Kinotavr 2009: The Victory of New Drama”

• Christina Stojanova: “Characters and Circumstances: Notes on the Competition Program of the 31st Moscow International Film Festival”

Issue 25: July 2009

• Kristina Matvienko: With a Cine-Eye through Russia: The Festival “Kinoteatr.doc” 2009

• Irina Mel’nikova: (Re)presentation of The Metamorphosis: Valerii Fokin, Franz Kafka, René Magritte and the Issue of Cinematic Adaptation

• [Interview] Anton Sidarenka: Interview with Sergei Loznitsa. Conversations on Cinema: "A Master of Time"

Issue 24: April 2009

• Nikolai Izvolov: Designed Sound in the USSR

• Jane Knox-Voina: New ‘New’ Wave Filmmakers Welcome Their Audiences’ Discomfort: Kazakh and Kyrgyz Youth Films

• Gulnara Abikeeva: Central Asian Documentary Films of the Soviet Era as a Factor in the Formation of National Identity

Festival Report:

• Gulbara Tolomushova: The Secret Sense of the Tashkent Messages

Issue 23: January 2009

• Maria Belodubrovskaya: Understanding the Magic: Special Effects in Ladislas Starewitch's L'Horloge magique

• Larisa Maliukova: The State of the Art: Russian Animation Today

• Evgenii Margolit: The Image of Germans in Russian Cultural Space

Festival Reports:

• Birgit Beumers: New Voices and Old Images: Eurasia 2008

• Gulbara Tolomushova: Dushanbe Flights to Googoosh's Songs: Didor 2008

Issue 22: October 2008

• Klaus Eder: Moscow 2008: The Center of the Province

• Nina Tsyrkun: "Forward to the Past, or: What kind of millennium has begun?" (on the Russian Program of the Moscow International Film Festival)

• Diliara Tasbulatova: "Kinotavr 19"

• Aliya Moldalieva: "New Cinema in Kyrgyzstan"

Issue 21: July 2008
Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium 2008 — The Ideological Occult: Russian Cinema under Putin:

• Seth Graham: "Two Decades of Post-Soviet Cinema: Taking Stock of Our Stocktaking"
• Stephen Norris: "Packaging the Past: Cinema and Nationhood in the Putin Era"
• Marina Drozdova: "Tremors: Various Types of Unrest"
• Aleksandr Kiselev: " 'No Power Can Force Us to Live Badly' "
• Gregory Dolgopolov: “Liquidating the Happy end of the Putin-era”

• Birgit Beumers: "The 13th Open Russian Animation Festival Suzdal" (2008)

• Dina Goder: "Kinoteatr.doc 2008: Some Notes on the Cuffs"

• David MacFadyen: “The Presumed Threat of Digital Culture to Russian Cinema”

Issue 20: April 2008

• Tom Birchenough: The Koktebel Studio

• Dar'ia Borisova: The Forum of National Cinematographies Played at Being a Film School

• Barbara Wurm: The International Film Festival Rotterdam — A Festival of Significance for Russian Cinema; In Focus: Svetlana Proskurina

• Birgit Beumers: Returning to the Roots: Central Asia in Rottterdam

• [Interview] Inna Smailova: Interview with Abai Kulbai: The Keeper of Eternal Values in Cinema

Issue 19: January 2008

• [Interview] Giulia Marcucci: Interview with Aleksandr Mindadze: From Scriptwriter to Director

• Irina Shilova: Renata Litvinova: Actress and Persona

• Michael Rouland: A Tour through Kinostan

• Inna Smailova: Three Generations of Kazakh Cinematographers: Action - Reaction - Change of Reality

• Eugénie Zvonkine: "On a Motorbike or on a Horse?": The IV Eurasia International Film Festival 2007

Issue 18: October 2007

• Tom Birchenough: "Vladivostok 2007": The lnternational Pacific Meridian Festival

• Mihai Chirilov: "Phony Games: The Moscow International Film Festival 2007"

• Jeremy Hicks: “Reflections of Andrei Tarkovskii: The Zerkalo Festival and Conference”

• David MacFadyen: “Strike Up, Pipers! The Russian Program of the Moscow Film Festival, 2007”

• Kirill Razlogov: "Kinotavr: Caught in the Crossfire"

Issue 17: July 2007
Melodrama and Kino-Ideology: Pittsburgh Russian Film Symposium Roundtable:

• Peter Bagrov: "Soviet Melodrama: A Historical Overview"
• Dawn Seckler: "Orphans of the Storm: Economic Destitution, Physical Lack, and Social Alienation in the Contemporary Russian Melodrama"
• Oleg Sulkin: "Melodrama as the Experience of the Moment"
• Dmitrii Savel'ev: "Out of Ideology: The Post-Soviet Melodrama"
• Mikhail Trofimenkov: "Origin of the Species: Post-Soviet Melodrama"
• David MacFadyen: "Ethical Masochism in Recent Russian Melodrama"
• Marcia Landy: "Melodrama: Short Reflections on a Long Subject"

• Kristina Matvienko: The Third Festival of Real Cinema: "Kinoteatr.doc" (2007)

Issue 16: April 2007

• Jose Alaniz: Cinema without Barriers

• Thomas Campbell: A Khakassian Sends a Postcard Home: The Strange Career of Evgenii "Debil" Kondrat'ev

• David MacFadyen: Changing Notions of Realism in Primetime Russian TV Drama

• Stephen Norris: In the Gloom: The Political Lives of Undead Bodies in Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch

Issue 15: January 2007

• Peter Bagrov: Ermler, Stalin, and Animation: On the Film The Peasants (1934)

• Birgit Beumers and Michael Rouland: Eurasia 2006: An International Festival?

• Konstantine Klioutchkine: The Kamenskaia Television Series and the Conventions of Russian Television

• Alena Solntseva: KINOTEATR.DOC: The First Three Years

Issue 14: October 2006

• Svetlana Khokhriakova: Starless, Prize-less: The Moscow International Film Festival 2006

• Adam Lowenstein: From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema (Lincoln Center Program, August 2006)

• Elena Plakhova: Victims of Euphoria: The 17th Open Russian Film Festival (Kinotavr 2006)

• Birgit Beumers: Cannes 2006: The Russian Presence

Issue 13: July 2006

• Natalia Lukinykh: Inspired by the Oscar, Hardened by the Marketplace. On the Everydays and Holidays of Russian Animation. (Suzdal Animation Festival)

• Eugenie Zvonkine: The Tenth Forum for National Cinematographies of the CIS and the Baltic States (Kinoforum)

• Aleksandr Deriabin: Judgment Day: Recreation and Stylization (On Ethics in Documentary Filmmaking and Other Matters)

Issue 12: April 2006

• Bauyrzhan Nogerbek: "The Eurasia-2005 Film Festival: Ambitions and Realities"

• Vladimir Padunov: Storing and Restoring History: Gosfil'mofond and the 10th Belye Stolby Archival Film Festival

• Thomas Campbell: Five Theses About Timur Bekmambetov's Day Watch

Russian TV-Serials: AAASS Roundtable 2005: "Russian TV: Past Issues of Present Concern"

• Birgit Beumers: "The Serialization of the War"
• David MacFadyen: "The Significance of Brezhnev for Russian TV Drama Today"
• Alexander Prokhorov: "Size Matters: The Ideological Functions of the Length of Soviet Feature Films and Television Mini-Series in the 1950s and 1960s"

Issue 11: January 2006

• José Alaniz: Moscow Conceptualism and the ArtKomiks of Gosha Ostretsov

• Thomas H. Campbell: The Bioaesthetics of Evgenii Iufit

• Seth Graham: Iusup Razykov and Contemporary Uzbek Cinema

Issue 10: October 2005

• Elena Stishova: There's No Point Arguing with the Marketplace: The Ninth KinoForum

• Aleksandr Shpagin: Newly Sprouting Seedlings in the Rustling Field of Domestic Cinema (Kinotavr 2005)

• Diliara Tasbulatova: Study, Study, Study: The Grand Prize of the 27th Moscow International Film Festival Went to Aleksei Uchitel''s Dreaming of Space  

Issue 9: July 2005

• Ian Christie: Iakov Protazanov: A Timely Case for Treatment

• Konstantine Klioutchkine: "Fedor Mikhailovich Lucked Out with Vladimir Vladimirovich": The Idiot

• Television Series in the Context of Putin's Culture

Issue 8: April 2005

• John MacKay:  The "Spinning Top" Takes Another Turn: Vertov Today

• Petre Petrov:  The Freeze of Historicity in Thaw Cinema

• Emma Widdis: Muratova's Clothes, Muratova's Textures, Muratova's Skin

• David MacFadyen: Literature Has Left the Building: Russian Romance and Today 's TV Drama

Issue 7: January 2005

• Special Feature: Dziga Vertov: John MacKay: Disorganized Noise: Enthusiasm and the Ear of the Collective

• KinoShock 2004: Gul'nara Abikeyeva: KinoShock: A Panorama of National Cinemas  

Issue 6: October 2004
"National Cinema": Pittsburgh Film Colloquium roundtable featuring:  

• Nancy Condee: Imperial Ectoplasm
• Marcia Landy: Frames or Frame Ups of National Cinema
• Adam Lowenstein: David Cronenberg and the 'Face' of National Authorship

Moscow International Film Festival 2004 : Susan Larsen: At the Intersection of Art, Commerce, and National Pride  

Issue 5:  July 2004

• Kinoforum 2004: Vladimir Padunov: Imperial Acorn -→ National Oaks: The Eighth KinoForum .

• Kinotavr 2004: Victor Matizen: Masses and Classes: Kinotavr 2004 .

Issue 4:  April 2004

• Josephine Woll: Exorcising the Devil: Russian Cinema and Horror.

Issue 3:  January 2004

• Vladimir Padunov: Stars Above Almaty: Kazakh Cinema Between 1998 and 2003 .

• Bauyrzhan Nogerbek: Demythologizing and Reconstructing National Space in the Kazakh "New Wave" .

Issue 1:  July 2003

• Nancy Condee and Vladimir Padunov: Subtropical Cinema: Kinotavr, Collective Heroes and Small Screens: The Fourteenth Annual Open Russian Film Festival (3-17 June 2003).

• Vladimir Padunov: Moscow's Silver Anniversary: XXV Moscow International Film Festival (20-29 June 2003).