Full Description
This book explores evocations of and allusions to sexual desire in Soviet cinema, 1919-1991.
By deploying several lines of investigation - from the cult of the masculine, strong body in Stalinist cinema to the shifting signification of the naked body (male and female) in post-war cinema and to the display of a sexualised body in the late Soviet era - this book establishes the extent to which Soviet cinema actually did reveal sexuality. It also explores how external political and social factors impacted representation. Overall, the contributions challenge the narrative of Soviet cinema as an art form where the representation of sexuality was taboo and outline shifts in the concepts of the naked and sexualised body, of sexuality and sexual relationships.
This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the field of film studies, Slavic and Soviet studies, cultural studies, politics and gender studies.
Contents
Introduction: New ventures on sexuality, nudity and body culture in Soviet cinema
Part 1. Body Culture in Early Soviet and Stalinist Cinema
Chapter 1. The Overcoat (1926) through a gender lens: sexual desire and desire for domination
Chapter 2. The ecstatic body as image of sexual liberation: Fedor Nikitin's roles in Fridrikh Ermler's films of the late 1920s
Chapter 3. Nina Alisova's 'flirtatious movements' in Stalinist cinema
Chapter 4. Towards a history of Stalinist spectatorship: bodies on display in 1930s fizkul'tura films
Part 2. Bodies in Revolution
Chapter 5. From icon to flesh: The pregnant body in The Commissar (1967) and The Story of Asya Kliachina, Who Loved but Did Not Marry (1966)
Chapter 6. Savage youth: Documentary and desire in the cinema of Dinara Asanova
Chapter 7. Adolescence as a site of lesbian desire in Soviet cinema: The case of Dubravka
Part 3. Shifting Body Cultures
Chapter 8. Nude comedians of the Thaw
Chapter 9. Sexuality and nudity in Central Asia during Soviet times: the naked female body as surgissement in Andrei Konchalovsky's The First Teacher
Chapter 10. The image as eroticised and sexualised body in Andrei Tarkovsky's films
Chapter 11. Disturbing eroticisation of (male) bodies in Sergei Parajanov's films: Mythological revelation of a moral impediment
Part 4: Body Politics
Chapter 12. The cinematic Calyptics: Screened desire in Kira Muratova's films of the Soviet period
Chapter 13. Sexy scripts? Nadezhda Kozhushanaia's body language
Chapter 14. The naked turn in perestroika cinema
Chapter 15. Not all nudes are sexy: Psychoanalysis and Stalinist biopolitics in Vitalii Kanevskii's Freeze - Die - Come to Life!
