scholarly journals «I don’t want to watch every Sunday how I slash someone again»: The Memory of the Civil War, the Cinema and the Viewer’s Reception in the 1920s

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizaveta Zhdankova
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Soviet Film ◽  
Post War ◽  
Opinion Polls

During the 1920s in the USSR, the theme of the Civil War became an essential part of the mass culture of the period, and more specifically of Soviet film production. Produced in a context of shortages – experienced filmmakers and celluloid were lacking –, these films, which portrayed a simplified vision of events, had an essential propaganda purpose for the new Bolshevik regime. This article analyses the reception of these films on the basis of public discussions and opinion polls in cinemas among moviegoers. This work deals with the generational gap concerning the reception of this production: films that aroused the enthusiasm of a young public were often more criticized by the older generations, survivors of the Civil War. Indeed, the latter considered that the productions did not do justice to their sacrifices during those years of conflict. The violence of some shots, the blood on the screen, as well as the fate of the main characters are at the focus of heated discussions. This study focuses on the memory and commemoration of the Civil War in the first post-war decade.

scholarly journals «The White Guard» on TV: fascinated by masscult mythology

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
Sergey Nikolayevich Ilchenko
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Soviet Film ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Mikhail Bulgakov ◽  
Semantic Difference ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article analyzes the television adaptation of the famous novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, shown on Russian television in 2012. The author juxtaposes the TV-series with the renowned Soviet film Days of the Turbins, premiered in 1976. The analysis is carried out in the context of the history of a theatre version of the novel The White guard, staged in the Moscow Academic Art Theatre in the 1920s, that is Days of the Turbins, highly appreciated by Stalin. Traditionally, both theatre and cinema directors were drawn to the play adapted by Mikhail Bulgakov after his novel. Anyhow, there is a certain subject and semantic difference between these two works. The author analyzes the structure of the TV version, its style, elaboration of on-screen characters, based on the literary source and previous interpretation of the play Days of the Turbins. However, the author argues, that ideological and figurative interference into the original, adaptation to the stereotypes of mass culture significantly distort the perception of Bulgakovs works, largely obliged to the writerss mood and emotions experienced in the years of Revolution and Civil war. Concluding, the author pinpoints both - complexity unit of Bulgakovs text adaptation towards contemporary TV, and misjudgements of the TV-series makers in the way of conception and realization.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

From Cycling Priests to the ‘Sportsman's Pope’. Italy, Sport and the Catholic Church

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Martin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Tour De France ◽  
Alternative Culture ◽  
National Life ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Church ◽  
Regime Analysis

This article surveys the Catholic Church's exploitation of sport in Liberal (1861–1922), Fascist (1922–1943), and post-war Italy. It examines how and why the Church overcame its initial reticence to embrace sport and turn it into a fundamental pillar of an alternative culture that challenged the monopoly of national sporting federations. Following the rise of Fascism, sport became one of the principal means by which the Church resisted a complete takeover by the regime. Analysis of the devout Catholic cyclist Gino Bartali reveals how the Church maintained its identity and tradition of sporting independence despite the inevitable suppression of Catholic sporting organisations. Culminating in an examination of the ‘immortalisation’ of Bartali after his win in the 1948 Tour De France – a victory popularly credited with saving Italy from civil war – the article illuminates the processes by which sport became a central feature of Catholicism in national life. It highlights the Church's contribution to the development of Italian sport, assesses the wider impact of sport's role in forming alternative cultures, and argues that sport perfectly positioned the Church to respond to the demands of Reconstruction Italy and provided opportunities to secure a post-war Christian Democratic society.

The ‘civic religion’ of the Resistance in post-war Italy

Modern Italy ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gundle
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Artistic Representations ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Civic Religion ◽  
Post War ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
High Degree ◽  
First World

SummaryThe problem of the legitimacy or otherwise of the Resistance tradition in post-war Italy has been addressed in recent years mainly in terms of the role of the partisan struggle and its political legacy. This article aims to assess the tradition in terms of commemorative practices, rituals, artistic representations and monuments. It seeks to evaluate whether the Resistance gave rise to a civic religion that may be compared to those which existed in the Liberal period, based on the heroic struggles and figures of the Risorgimento, and the Fascist period, which drew on the feelings of loss and injustice that followed the First World War. It is argued that, although the Resistance lacked, prior to the 1960s, a high degree of official sponsorship, it did acquire some of the features of a civic religion. Its appeal was mainly limited to the regions administered by the Left which had seen a significant degree of Resistance activity in 1943-5. Even here, however, it was difficult to sustain the tradition as a key feature of community life during and after the economic boom: the eclipse of public culture, the decline of public mourning and the development of commercial leisure and mass culture all served to deprive it of meaning. Although intellectuals, politicians and ex-partisans reacted to this situation, the visual and rhetorical languages associated with the commemoration of the Resistance became increasingly divorced from everyday life and dominant social values.

scholarly journals REVIEW: 'Embedded' with the invaded Iraqi people

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 220-224
Author(s):  
David Robie
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
The People ◽  
Chain Of Command ◽  
Post War ◽  
Policy Failures ◽  
Insight Into

Wilson's Long drive Through A Short War is a personal account of their time in Iraq during the invasion and a subsequent post-war visit to the country to see the fate of the people he had met.  Hersh's Chain of Command provides many of the missing links to those seeking greater insight into the wider struggle of Iraq's civil war unleashed by the failure of US post-invasion policy, even if this is not officially admitted. His 'muckracking' investigations concentrate on the policy failures, corruptions and abuses of power. 

Soviet Art House

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Soviet Film ◽  
Soviet Art ◽  
Feature Films

This book examines cinema in the Brezhnev era from the perspective of one of the USSR’s largest studios, Lenfilm. Producing around thirty feature films per year, the studio had over three thousand employees working in every area of film production. The discussion covers the period from 1961 to the collapse of centralized state facilities in 1986. The book focuses particularly on the younger directors at Lenfilm, those who joined the studio in the recruiting drive that followed Khrushchev’s decision to expand film production. Drawing on documents from archives, the analysis portrays film production “in the round” and shows that the term “censorship” is less appropriate than the description preferred in the Soviet film industry itself, “control,” which referred to a no less exigent but far more complex and sophisticated process. The book opens with four framing chapters that examine the overall context in which films were produced: the various crises that beset film production between 1961 and 1969 (chapter 1) and 1970 and 1985 (chapter 2), the working life of the studio, and particularly the technical aspects of production (chapter 3), and the studio aesthetic (chapter 4). The second part of the book comprises close analyses of fifteen films that are typical of the studio’s production. The book concludes with a brief survey of Lenfilm’s history after the Fifth Congress of the Filmmakers’ Union in 1986, which swept away the old management structures and, in due course, the entire system of filmmaking in the USSR.

A Book Review in the Form of a Polemic Chad Elias's Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon and the Old New World Order

ARTMargins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Ghalya Saadawi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social History ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
World Order ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Post War

Chad Elias' 2018 book Posthumous Images: Contemporary Art and Memory Politics in Post-Civil War Lebanon attempts to deal with the question of post-civil war representation, image-making and contemporary art from the perspective of memory studies in Lebanon. Dealing with a particular group of artists working since the 1990's in installation, video, film, and performance, the book attempts to create a relation between their artistic propositions and narratives on the one hand, and the post-war reckoning with the missing and disappeared, the history of former Leftist combatants, neglected space programs, reconstruction and urban space, on the other. The book has a series of shortcomings and structural, theoretical blind spots that this review essay attempts to redress. For instance, Posthumous Images has no framework for the notions of communities of witnessing, collective memory, or post-war amnesia that seems to underpin its claims, as they seem to figure only nominally. In these theoretical omissions, the essay argues, the book adopts and furthers the ideology human rights as this relates to the politics of remembrance, as well as to Lebanon's neoliberal post-war realities. Moreover, it lacks a rigorous art historical frame to study the given artworks formally, or theoretically, leaving the book open to a post-historical method that disavows a critical, social history of art needed for an analysis of post-civil war and post-Cold war art forms in Lebanon and beyond.

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