Performing Femininity

Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema

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by Rachel Morley

Type

Essays

Subject

Countries > Russia / USSR

Keywords

Russia, 1910s, women

Publishing date

2021

Publisher

Bloomsbury Academic

Collection

KINO - The Russian and Soviet Cinema

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 306 pages
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches (14 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-350-24286-9

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Book Presentation:
Oriental dancers, ballerinas, actresses and opera singers the figure of the female performer is ubiquitous in the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia. From the first feature film, Romashkov's Stenka Razin (1908), through the sophisticated melodramas of the 1910s, to Viskovsky's The Last Tango (1918), made shortly before the pre-Revolutionary film industry was dismantled by the new Soviet government, the female performer remains central. In this groundbreaking new study, Rachel Morley argues that early Russian film-makers used the character of the female performer to explore key contemporary concerns from changing conceptions of femininity and the emergence of the so-called New Woman, to broader questions concerning gender identity. Morley also reveals that the film-makers repeatedly used this archetype of femininity to experiment with cinematic technology and develop a specific cinematic language."

About the Author:
Birgit Beumers, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the Department of Russian Studies at the University of Bristol, Bristol, England. She is editor of the online journal KinoKultura, which is devoted to contemporary Russian film.

Press Reviews:
"Meticulously researched, elegantly written, and bristling with fascinating insights into pre-revolutionary Russian cinema and Russian women's history, Rachel Morley's excellent book joins the many seminal studies from I.B. Tauris's authoritative Kino series ... Offers useful insights for scholars and students investigating Russian cultural history, film, and gender studies." ―Slavic Review

See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Academic