Its unique ability to sway the masses has led many observers to consider cinema the artform with the greatest political force. The images it produces can bolster leaders or contribute to their undoing. Soviet filmmakers often had to face great obstacles as they struggled to make art in an authoritarian society that put them not only under ideological pressure but also imposed rigid economic constraints on the industry. But while the Brezhnev era of Soviet filmmaking is often depicted as a period of great repression, Soviet Art House reveals that the films made at the prestigious Lenfilm studio in this period were far more imaginative than is usually suspected.
In this pioneering study of a Soviet film studio, author Catriona Kelly delves into previously unpublished archival documents and interviews, memoirs, and the films themselves to illuminate the ideological, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of filmmaking in the Brezhnev era. She argues that especially the young filmmakers who joined the studio after its restructuring in 1961 revitalized its output and helped establish Leningrad as a leading center of oppositional art. This unique insight into Soviet film production shows not only the inner workings of Soviet institutions before the system collapsed but also traces how filmmakers tirelessly dodged and negotiated contradictory demands to create sophisticated and highly original movies.
Industry Reviews
"In Soviet Art House, Kelly takes a studio-centric approach to Soviet film history, looking at the Lenfilm Studio from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. This studio view provides an opportunity to look beyond common ways in which film historians viewed the Brezhnev years." -- A. H. Chapman, CHOICE
"This deeply researched work is an extraordinarily innovative contribution to Soviet film studies. Kelly not only provides us with a comprehensive study of a vitally important film studio, one crucial to Soviet cultural endeavors, or pretensions, she also demonstrates how novel many of their offerings were." -- Steven A. Usitalo, Slavonic and East European Review
"There is nothing more difficult than writing about a past that has yet to become history. This richly-researched and truly outstanding book, written with zest and elegance, tells the story of the Lenfilm studio. Through art house Soviet cinema it immerses us in the Brezhnev era, as it opens up the door to the world of Soviet sensitivity and imagination to allow us to understand how the Soviet era was exhausted and why it ended." -- Evgeny Dobrenko, the author
of Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics
"In the years of Stagnation, Lenfilm studio was one of the symbols of artistic freedom in the USSR - with reservations, of course. Yet, there has not been a scholarly monograph dedicated to this seminal page in the history of Soviet culture - neither in Russia, nor outside the country. Catriona Kelly's book fills this deplorable gap. But, as a genuine work of history, it covers much more than that. It is a meticulous and pioneering study of the mechanics of
Soviet film production, of the cultural politics in the murky period that would eventually lead to the collapse of the Union. But first and foremost, it is a tribute to some of the best films ever
produced in one of the leading filmmaking countries, and to the filmmakers with their inevitably dramatic biographies." -- Peter Bagrov, George Eastman Museum
"To embark on making an art house movie under Brezhnev, the author shows with the clarity and insight of someone who spent years on studying the Lenfilm studio papers, was tantamount to submitting one's creative will to a variety of whims and whipsDLinstitutional and ideological. Every chapter in Kelly's book devoted to this or that art film reads like a perilous journey that ends in a miraculous survival." -- Yuri Tsivian, University of Chicago
