NEP (New Economic Policy)
Created by Lenin in 1921, the NEP was designed to revitalize the economy by granting greater freedom in agriculture, industry and trade. Certain small businesses were allowed to engage in free trade operations that earned a profit. Critics argued that it closely resembled the capitalist model, but it did help to raise the national income level. Stalin replaced the NEP in 1928 with a series of Five-Year Plans.
NEPman was a term associated with men and women who took advantage of the opportunities presented by the NEP. They were seen as enemies to communism as they profited from the private trade allowed through the NEP. Often represented on screen as greedy, obese and opportunistic, notably in Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924), NEPmen retreated from the business sector by the late 20's with the introduction of Stalin's Five Year Plan.
For More Info:
Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Alexander Rabinowitch (ed.). Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Gorsuch, Anne. Soviet Youth and the Politics of Popular Culture during NEP. Social History, Vol 17.2 (May, 1992), 189-201.
NEPman was a term associated with men and women who took advantage of the opportunities presented by the NEP. They were seen as enemies to communism as they profited from the private trade allowed through the NEP. Often represented on screen as greedy, obese and opportunistic, notably in Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924), NEPmen retreated from the business sector by the late 20's with the introduction of Stalin's Five Year Plan.
For More Info:
Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Alexander Rabinowitch (ed.). Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Gorsuch, Anne. Soviet Youth and the Politics of Popular Culture during NEP. Social History, Vol 17.2 (May, 1992), 189-201.
Nicholas II (1968-1918)
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The last emperor of Russia, Nicholas II succeeded his father Alexander III as Tsar in 1894 and was crowned ruler of Russia in 1896. Nicholas strengthened Russia through the creation of the Trans-Siberian railway and strong European ties to both France and England. However, his influence waned after suffering a humiliating loss of the war with Japan, which in-part fueled revolution in 1905. Public dissatisfaction of both national and foreign policies led to Nicholas’ abdication of the throne in March 1917. The Romanov dynasty ended when the Bolsheviks arrested and executed him along with his family in 1918.
More Info:
Alexabdrov, Victor. The End of the Romanovs. London: Hutchinson, 1966.
Charques, Richard. Twilight of Imperial Russia: The Reign of Tsar Nicholas II. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
The last emperor of Russia, Nicholas II succeeded his father Alexander III as Tsar in 1894 and was crowned ruler of Russia in 1896. Nicholas strengthened Russia through the creation of the Trans-Siberian railway and strong European ties to both France and England. However, his influence waned after suffering a humiliating loss of the war with Japan, which in-part fueled revolution in 1905. Public dissatisfaction of both national and foreign policies led to Nicholas’ abdication of the throne in March 1917. The Romanov dynasty ended when the Bolsheviks arrested and executed him along with his family in 1918.
More Info:
Alexabdrov, Victor. The End of the Romanovs. London: Hutchinson, 1966.
Charques, Richard. Twilight of Imperial Russia: The Reign of Tsar Nicholas II. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Nikitin, Fyodor (1900-1988)
Ukrainian-born film actor whose most memorable work in the 1920s was in the films of Fridrikh Ermler, notably Katka the Apple Seller (1926), The Parisian Cobbler (1927) and A Fragment of Empire (1928). He remained a busy and popular actor up to the 1980s.
IMDB page
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs emerged in 1934 as the consolidated organization that succeeded a number of different versions (earlier incarnations include the Cheka and GPU) of the Bolshevik regime's state security, or secret police. Holding close to unrestrained power over individual citizens, including arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention without charge and the common use of torture during interrogation, the NKVD was the tool Stalin used to carry out the intense purges that marked his time in power. The Soviet film industry got off relatively lighted, but figures associated with it who fell victim to the NKVD include Isaac Babel and Vsevelod Meyerhold.
Non-Diegetic Insert
A non-diegetic insert, a shot that appears outside the diegesis of the sequence, is a “violation of continuity” in which the filmmaker cuts to a “metaphorical or symbolic” shot that is outside the spacio-temporal realm of the narrative. This technique is used frequently within intellectual montage in order to juxtapose a symbolic image with the narrative action to create new meaning. In Strike for example, the slaughter of the bull is outside the narrative but is cut to in order to reinforce the notion of slaughter (Bordwell 336). Or as Pudovkin demonstrates in Mother, images of a a surging river is intercut into scenes of the imprisoned hero developing hope for an escape.
For More Info:
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art :An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.
For More Info:
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art :An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.
The Slaughter Scene from Strike,
October Revolution, 1917
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The October Revolution overthrew the Provisional Government established after the February Revolution in favor of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party rule. The revolution was performed by Socialist revolutionaries, anarchists, and Red Guards. The revolt took place in Saint Petersburg on October 25th with the seizure of the Winter Palace.
For More Info:
Dukes, Paul. October and the World: Perspectives of the Russian Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Pomper, Philip. Lenin’s Brother: The Origins of the October Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.
The October Revolution overthrew the Provisional Government established after the February Revolution in favor of Lenin’s Bolshevik Party rule. The revolution was performed by Socialist revolutionaries, anarchists, and Red Guards. The revolt took place in Saint Petersburg on October 25th with the seizure of the Winter Palace.
For More Info:
Dukes, Paul. October and the World: Perspectives of the Russian Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Pomper, Philip. Lenin’s Brother: The Origins of the October Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010.
ODSK
Acronym for Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema. Created by the Communist Party Central Committee in 1924 to replace the short-lived OSPK (Society of Builders of Proletarian Cinema), it was intended as a group for filmgoers as a mass, non-industry version of ARK, which became an autonomous group within the larger ODSK. It played a major part in the cinefication campaign, having the main responsibility for distributing films in the countryside, and strongly opposed Sovkino’s policy of importing foreign films and, even more, showing them to rural audiences. The cinefication campaign largely ended in the late 1920s, but the organization was not formally dissolved until 1934.
Overlapping Editing
Overlapping editing is an editing technique that offers the expansion of temporal space by having the “second shot repeat part or all of the action from the previous shot” (Bordwell History 142). While continuity editing would present two shots of the same action together to express a continuous flow, and elliptical editing would condense an action so that on screen, it appears to take up less time than in reality, overlapping editing works to expand the action, taking more time than reality, through the repetition of movement for dramatic purposes (Film Art 308). Eisenstein uses this technique readily, as for example, in Battleship Potemkin, the action of a sailor smashing a plate is spread across ten repetitive shots to further depict the frustration of the oppressed sailors.
For More Info:
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art :An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.
Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History :An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994. Print
For More Info:
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art :An Introduction. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Print.
Thompson, Kristin, and David Bordwell. Film History :An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994. Print
From 4:00-4:30 is the plate breaking scene from Battleship Potemkin.
Overtonal Montage
Overtonal montage could be described as the extended version of tonal montage, in which a specified tone is exhibited over the course of an entire sequence or even throughout the entire film. However, unlike the emotional colouring of tonal montage, overtonal montage extends from a mere visual depiction of associative emotion to the realm of “direct physiological perception” (Eisenstein 78). The difficulty in determining overtonal montage stems from the fact that it's definition is less in its appearance and more in the extra-dimensional feeling that is produced. While tonal montage is produced through the associational complexes related to the images, overtonal montage is determined more through the relationship of secondary stimulus of an image to the central stimulus. In other words, the central stimulus is representative of the dominant tone, while the secondary stimuli, including metric, rhythmic, and tonal effects, are “overtonal”, enveloping the dominant tone and impacting it's physiological reception.
For More Info:
Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form [and]the Film Sense; Two Complete and Unabridged Works. New York: Meridian Books, 1957. Print.
For More Info:
Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form [and]the Film Sense; Two Complete and Unabridged Works. New York: Meridian Books, 1957. Print.
Parallel Editing
According to Pudovkin, parallel editing is an instance in which two technically unconnected actions are “linked together and proceed in parallel” to remind the viewer of their thematic link and increase tension or emotional impact (Pudovkin 63). The resulting sequence allows for the depiction of two separate spacio-temporal scenes presented as through occurring simultaneously through which they build to an emotionally intense climax.
For More Info:
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Illarionovich, Richard Taylor, and Evgeni Filippov. Selected Essays., 2006. Print.
For More Info:
Pudovkin, Vsevolod Illarionovich, Richard Taylor, and Evgeni Filippov. Selected Essays., 2006. Print.
From 10:00-15:00 is an example of parallel editing from Strike in which the scene cuts back and forth from the striking workers and the stockholders
reading their demands.
reading their demands.
Piel, Harry (1892-1963)
German actor-writer-director who began making films in 1912. His escapist films, labeled “adventure trash” by leftist critics, were enormously popular in the Soviet Union and he was the biggest box office draw of the era. An indication of this popularity can be seen in A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927, Sergei Komarov), in which a hapless movie usher pretends to be famous and is introduced to the visiting Hollywood star as the “Russian Harry Piel.” When strict control over the importing of foreign films began in 1928 as part of the Cultural Revolution, all of Piel’s films were pulled out of circulation in the Soviet Union. He remained popular in Germany up to the end of World War II, when he was blacklisted for his Nazi Party connections. After a brief comeback in the early 1950s, he retired in 1953.
Harry Piel site
IMDB page
Proletariat
In Marxist theory, which defines social groups according to their relationship to the means of production, the proletariat refers to the urban working class under capitalism which must sell their labour to survive, and are consequently exploited by the ruling classes.
Proletkino
A studio that produced a handful of films between 1923 and 1926, when it was swallowed by Sovkino. Its most notable film was probably Commander Ivanov (The Beauty and the Bolshevik) (1922, Aleksandr Razumnyj).
List of Proletkino films, 1923-1926
List of Proletkino films, 1923-1926