Sexuality, Nudity and the Body in Soviet Cinema

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-61532-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 254 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series

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.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, Undergraduate Advanced, and Undergraduate Core

Autoren/Hrsg.

Beumers, Birgit

Gery, Catherine

Géry, Catherine

Zvonkine, Eugenie

Zvonkine, Eugénie

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Empirische Sozialforschung, Statistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Prostitution und Sexindustrie: Soziale & Ethische Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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!

Über Autor(innen)

Birgit Beumers is Professor Emerita of Film Studies at Aberystwyth University (UK) and working on a project on Central Asian cinema at Passau University in Germany.

Catherine Géry is Professor of Russian Literature and Cinema at INALCO (Paris) and Director of the Pedagogical and Scientific Council of the Cité du Genre in France.

Eugénie Zvonkine is Professor of Cinema Studies at the University Paris 8 and a junior member of the French University Institute.