Cinepaternity: Fathers and Sons in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film

This wide-ranging collection investigates the father/son dynamic in post-Stalinist Soviet cinema and its Russian successor. Contributors analyze complex patterns of identification, disavowal, and displacement in films by such diverse directors as Khutsiev, Motyl', Tarkovsky, Balabanov, Sokurov, Todorovskii, Mashkov, and Bekmambetov. Several chapters focus on the difficulties of fulfilling the paternal function, while others show how vertical and horizontal male bonds are repeatedly strained by the pressure of redefining an embattled masculinity in a shifting political landscape.

"A solid contribution to the fields of Soviet and post-Soviet studies, bringing to light a new understanding of post-Stalinist cinema." --Lilya Kaganovsky, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"A valuable contribution to the literature on Soviet/Russian film.... Recommended." --Choice, September 2010, Vol. 48 No. 1 Indiana University Press

"Helena Goscilo and Yana Hashamova's collection of essays is a most welcome addition to the existing literature on Russian cinema.... The volume will no doubt find wide application in university courses." --Slavic Review, Summer 2011, Vol. 70, no. 2 Indiana University Press

"[This] volume is a must-read for film and cultural studies scholars for two reasons: first, the collection addresses a major, vexed sociocultural issue over time; second, this basket of articles--all solid, some exceptional--provides new approaches to a number of important Soviet and Russian films." --The Russian Review

"The eleven articles in this anthology provide insightful studies of the Oedipal dynamics dramatized in diverse films beginning in the immediate post-Stalin period." --SEER Indiana University Press

"This volume truly offers a feast of intellectual delights and many of its essays lend themselves excellently to incorporation in reading lists for a wide range of courses on Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, and culture more broadly." --Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 12/7/10

Helena Goscilo is Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University. She is editor (with Stephen Norris) of Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia (IUP, 2008).

Yana Hashamova is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University. She is author of Pride and Panic: Russian Imagination of the West in Post-Soviet Film.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Cinepaternity: The Psyche and Its Heritage

Part 1. Thaw, Stagnation, Perestroika

1. The Myth of the "Great Family" in Marlen Khutsiev's Lenin's Guard and Mark Osep'ian's Three Days of Viktor Chernyshev / Alexander Prokhorov

2. Mending the Rupture: The War Trope and the Return of the Imperial Father in 1970s Cinema / Elena Prokhorova

3. Models of Male Kinship in Perestroika Cinema / Seth Graham

Part 2. War in the Post-Soviet Dialogue with Paternity

4. The Fathers' War through the Sons' Lens / Tatiana Smorodinskaya

5. War as the Family Value: Failing Fathers and Monstrous Sons in My Stepbrother Frankenstein / Mark Lipovetsky

6. A Surplus of Surrogates: Mashkov's Fathers / Helena Goscilo

Part 3. Reconceiving Filial Bonds

7. Resurrected Fathers and Resuscitated Sons: Homosocial Fantasies in The Return and Koktebel / Yana Hashamova

8. The Forces of Kinship: Timur Bekmambetov's Night Watch Cinematic Trilogy / Vlad Strukov

9. Fathers, Sons, and Brothers: Redeeming Patriarchal Authority in The Brigade / Brian James Baer

Part 4. Auteurs and the Psychological/Philosophical

10. Fraught Filiation: Andrei Tarkovsky's Transformations of Personal Trauma / Helena Goscilo

11. Vision and Blindness in Sokurov's Father and Son / José Alaniz

Contributors

Index