FLME 2700 EXAM 2 STUDY GUIDE
Cinema unifies (and propaganda) - Answers - Soviet Union: after the Bolshevik
Revolution in 1917, faced with the task of industrializing an enormous agricultural
nation. Lenin = Bolshevik party (200,000 people leading a population of 160 million, 100
languages)
Non-industrial Soviet society - Answers - Shortage of cameras, projectors, film stock,
etc, materials gained through the black market.
Kuleshov's film school = film without film - Answers - Black market goods, scraps
basically. the LACK influenced the creation of montage.
Soviet Montage Movement - Answers - collision of images based upon juxtaposition
General laws of how films affect audiences - Answers - Pavlovian scientific principles,
conditioned behavior used in agitation propaganda. Peasants would go to the train
depot to exchange their goods and cinema propaganda by the Bolshintsvo party would
be played
Bolshintsvo party - Answers - political party that was pro-proletariat, proletariats could
become bourgeoisie and vice versa, but you cannot attain aristocracy. used agit-prop at
train depots to manipulate peasants. Ignorant peasant easily manipulated when agitated
by the propaganda, & then the Bolshintsvo party member speaks about injustices
Kuleshov effect - Answers - Mozhukhin + soup = hunger, M + dead body = sorrow,
creative geography - people waving at each other from different cities creates a space
that doesn't exist. The individual shot was NOT the most important thing; it's how shots
are combined (montage) that's most important.
Creative Geography - Answers - we are all this united thing
Kuleshov loved the American cinema and Griffith (racist Birth of a Nation guy) -
Answers - Griffith discovered montage, but had used it to tell the wrong kinds of stories.
Revolution = attempt to create a classless society, a society based on the collective and
not the individual. Propaganda that could reach the furthermost peasant provinces.
Lost is the Romantic conception of the artist (creative genius with a unique personal
vision), art is a machine, art is a science in Soviet Cinema. - Answers - Won't work in a
classless society. No calling is higher than any other; all are needed in a society. The
artist is a worker.
Constructivism - Answers - Artist as engineer, building things (films) according to known
principles (like the laws Kuleshov articulated). theorists as well as practioners, trying to
, discover the laws of cinema and then to put those principles into practice. Fits with
Soviet ideology: idealizes machinery as a way of gaining enthusiasm for
industrialization. (we still have a bit of this: the utopian enthusiasm for virtual reality,
CDs, internet, special effects, etc.)
Method of Soviet Cinema - Answers - Don't JUST capture reality and present it back to
audiences. Emotionally convincing (Agit-prop) + show audiences things in a new light
(defamiliarization). You need to break things down into component parts and assemble
them into the most efficient/effective way possible (like a machine = metaphor for
Socialist state).
The component = shots taken from reality - Answers - Emphasis on realism: Vertov's
documentary footage, Eisenstein's naturalistic locations and use of nonactors. Shots
combined by the artist-engineer to create new meaning .
H'wood narratives = single protagonists vs. Soviet ideology = collective protagonists. -
Answers - Narrative is bourgeois and elitist. Cinema is like a circus. Moments of
spectacle are like electric shock to the viewer.
Sergei Eisenstein - Answers - Principal theorist and practitioner. Engineer, worked in
theater, then film. Renaissance man (knew Kabuki, French novels, experimental
psychology).
Eisenstein: Two shots placed together should be in conflict with each other. Montage is
conflict. - Answers - Shot A + Shot B = New Meaning C. Metaphor = chemical reaction =
intellectual montage. Montage makes the viewer make the connection, thus involving
the viewer in the process of the film. Unlike Hollywood, viewers can't just sit back and let
the narrative happen to them; they have to be actively involved in making meaning out
of the film.
For Eisenstein montage is not limited to narrative, it also is capable of transmitting
intellectual ideas in an emotionally forceful manner. - Answers - So for Eisenstein
montage is conflict. What kind of conflicts? All kinds, even down to the lowest levels:
conflict of line, movement (soldiers moving down stairs, people opposing them).
Strike (Eisenstein Soviet montage film) - Answers - slaughter house, carnage, soldiers
murdering peasants, murdering the cow, editing by frame. characters divided by
classes, the proletariats and the soldiers, a scene of the hands in the air before the
cow's throat is slit, peasants running from the soldiers. the cow is equated to the
peasants but also outraging farmer's viewing the film by slaughtering their means of
labor, saying they themselves & their livelihoods do not matter
Propaganda - Answers - is neutral
Cinema unifies (and propaganda) - Answers - Soviet Union: after the Bolshevik
Revolution in 1917, faced with the task of industrializing an enormous agricultural
nation. Lenin = Bolshevik party (200,000 people leading a population of 160 million, 100
languages)
Non-industrial Soviet society - Answers - Shortage of cameras, projectors, film stock,
etc, materials gained through the black market.
Kuleshov's film school = film without film - Answers - Black market goods, scraps
basically. the LACK influenced the creation of montage.
Soviet Montage Movement - Answers - collision of images based upon juxtaposition
General laws of how films affect audiences - Answers - Pavlovian scientific principles,
conditioned behavior used in agitation propaganda. Peasants would go to the train
depot to exchange their goods and cinema propaganda by the Bolshintsvo party would
be played
Bolshintsvo party - Answers - political party that was pro-proletariat, proletariats could
become bourgeoisie and vice versa, but you cannot attain aristocracy. used agit-prop at
train depots to manipulate peasants. Ignorant peasant easily manipulated when agitated
by the propaganda, & then the Bolshintsvo party member speaks about injustices
Kuleshov effect - Answers - Mozhukhin + soup = hunger, M + dead body = sorrow,
creative geography - people waving at each other from different cities creates a space
that doesn't exist. The individual shot was NOT the most important thing; it's how shots
are combined (montage) that's most important.
Creative Geography - Answers - we are all this united thing
Kuleshov loved the American cinema and Griffith (racist Birth of a Nation guy) -
Answers - Griffith discovered montage, but had used it to tell the wrong kinds of stories.
Revolution = attempt to create a classless society, a society based on the collective and
not the individual. Propaganda that could reach the furthermost peasant provinces.
Lost is the Romantic conception of the artist (creative genius with a unique personal
vision), art is a machine, art is a science in Soviet Cinema. - Answers - Won't work in a
classless society. No calling is higher than any other; all are needed in a society. The
artist is a worker.
Constructivism - Answers - Artist as engineer, building things (films) according to known
principles (like the laws Kuleshov articulated). theorists as well as practioners, trying to
, discover the laws of cinema and then to put those principles into practice. Fits with
Soviet ideology: idealizes machinery as a way of gaining enthusiasm for
industrialization. (we still have a bit of this: the utopian enthusiasm for virtual reality,
CDs, internet, special effects, etc.)
Method of Soviet Cinema - Answers - Don't JUST capture reality and present it back to
audiences. Emotionally convincing (Agit-prop) + show audiences things in a new light
(defamiliarization). You need to break things down into component parts and assemble
them into the most efficient/effective way possible (like a machine = metaphor for
Socialist state).
The component = shots taken from reality - Answers - Emphasis on realism: Vertov's
documentary footage, Eisenstein's naturalistic locations and use of nonactors. Shots
combined by the artist-engineer to create new meaning .
H'wood narratives = single protagonists vs. Soviet ideology = collective protagonists. -
Answers - Narrative is bourgeois and elitist. Cinema is like a circus. Moments of
spectacle are like electric shock to the viewer.
Sergei Eisenstein - Answers - Principal theorist and practitioner. Engineer, worked in
theater, then film. Renaissance man (knew Kabuki, French novels, experimental
psychology).
Eisenstein: Two shots placed together should be in conflict with each other. Montage is
conflict. - Answers - Shot A + Shot B = New Meaning C. Metaphor = chemical reaction =
intellectual montage. Montage makes the viewer make the connection, thus involving
the viewer in the process of the film. Unlike Hollywood, viewers can't just sit back and let
the narrative happen to them; they have to be actively involved in making meaning out
of the film.
For Eisenstein montage is not limited to narrative, it also is capable of transmitting
intellectual ideas in an emotionally forceful manner. - Answers - So for Eisenstein
montage is conflict. What kind of conflicts? All kinds, even down to the lowest levels:
conflict of line, movement (soldiers moving down stairs, people opposing them).
Strike (Eisenstein Soviet montage film) - Answers - slaughter house, carnage, soldiers
murdering peasants, murdering the cow, editing by frame. characters divided by
classes, the proletariats and the soldiers, a scene of the hands in the air before the
cow's throat is slit, peasants running from the soldiers. the cow is equated to the
peasants but also outraging farmer's viewing the film by slaughtering their means of
labor, saying they themselves & their livelihoods do not matter
Propaganda - Answers - is neutral
