CAROLINA SEMINAR: “Crashing Against Cold War Borders: Soviet Cinema Meets the French New Wave”

Marko Dumančić is Assistant Professor at Western Kentucky University. He works on a range of topics relating to Soviet cinema in both a domestic and international context. His research focus is on post-Stalinist cinema of the 1950s and 1960. He is currently completing a monograph entitled /The “New Men” of the Soviet Sixties: Masculinity in Film and Society after Stalin/. His work has appeared in /Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema/ and /Cold War History/.

The essay “Did Soviet Cinema Make Waves?: Searching for a New Wave in Post-Stalinist Cinematography, 1953-1968,” links Khrushchev-era film with the European trends of the same period, arguing that movie industries on both sides of the Iron Curtain were undergoing similar transformations and reacting to them in alike fashion. Rather than focus on evident differences, I accentuate striking parallels between the cinematographies of the two blocs. The many philosophical and moral concerns postwar Soviet and European filmmakers shared—despite their national and ideological differences—allowed for the creation of a shared cultural ecosystem. I conclude that besides engendering conflict and tension, the Cold War also created pockets of shared cultural space that facilitated artistic transfer and cooperation.