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• Mysterious Artist with a Movie Camera - Александр Риганов:«Тиссэ. Оператор Эйзенштейна», Санкт-Петербург: Издательство «Сеанс»,2020. ISBN 978-5-6042795-1-9, 384 pp.

  Ferenc Debreceni

  Views:

  158

  This review is a content and critical review of Alexander Riganov’s book on Soviet cinematographer Eduard Tisse (1897-1961), Tisse: Eisenstein’s cameraman, which was the first monograph of its kind published in Russian. The book follows the life of the first Soviet cameraman in chronological order from birth until his last days, with the author overviewingrelevant historic and cinematographic events throughout. Thus, there are three major stories in Riganov’s book: the life and artistic path of an artist, the history of a country, and the golden age of cinematography. Several unique archival documents, e.g. letters, diary segments, photographs etc., were first published in this book. The book’s author paid special attention to Tisse’s and Eisenstein’s joint works. The uniqueness and high professional standard of Riganov’s book makes it a piece of art worthy of attention.

• Chekhov in New York: the Functions of Frame in Louis Malle's "Vanya on 42nd Street" (1994)

  10 p.

  Olga Dzhumailo

  Views:

  193

  This paper focuses on Luis Malle’s creative adaptation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”. The frame location of "Vanya on 42nd street" is not only documentary evidence and a sign of admiration for the actors' ensemble, creating the spirit of live improvisation in the unfinished theatrical production by Andre Gregory. It is argued that the film is far from being another spectacular 're-citing' of Chekhov's ‘transcultural capital’. A set of framing elements foregrounds Chekhov's art in general and the way he represents Vanya’s stoic endurance in particular as resonating with the living experience of a person of any culture in whatever language (Russian, English, Bengali, theatrical, cinematic, etc.) holds general validity. Among leitmotifs which interconnect the frame and the drama performance within the film there are also those of kinship, unselfish  friendship and true involvement in life as an ongoing rehearsal and improvisation on an inescapable life project that is never successful.

• Gender and Space in Literature and Cinema (Bogomil Rainov’s Roads to Nowhere and Metodi Andonov’s A White Room)

  Natalya Nyagolova

  Views:

  122

  The article discusses the structural link between the gender model and the fictional space in Bogomil Rainov’s short story Roads to Nowhere (1966) and its film adaptation—Metodi Andovov’s A White Room (1968). The transformations of the original text are traced via several semantic oppositions (masculine-feminine, rational-emotional, order-chaos) and the influence of two aesthetic paradigms—noir and the existentialist “new wave”. These transformations are interpreted in the socio-cultural context of the Bulgarian “thaw” with its quest for the marginal, regional, personal alternatives within the socialist system.

• Object – Body – Flashback in “The Seagull” by Michael Mayer

  6 p.

  Natalia Niagolova

  Views:

  189

  The article features the transformation mechanisms of Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” in its film adaptation of 2018 by Michael Mayer. The director’s concept activates the opposition “memory – forgetfulness” and this is based on composition-visual reminiscences, i.e. flashbacks. The world of objects and the body discourse in the film complies with that specific film story of nostalgia in which the past is not simply going back to the things the characters were through, but also as a new reading of Chekhov’s intertextuality in the context of Anglo-Saxon cinema culture as well as a stylized memory of the Russian classic writer and his times.