LFU:online

Participants will deal with representations of the Other in Soviet and Postsoviet cinema; they will broaden their knowledge on cinema, film aesthetics and film history and will undertake exemplary film analyses.

In any speaking about the Other the perspective is already predetermined, a fundamental difference already implied. One of the central theses of postcolonial theory is the understanding of the Other as a relational term. According to Stuart Hall, the concept of the Other originates from the West, which is not to be understood as a geographical entity but rather as a historical construct or idea. According to this construct, the West stands for modernity, while other societies are denied contemporaneity with the Western world. 

Although Russia in its self-positioning since the 19th century generally did not see itself as part of the West, and although the Soviet empire defined itself as the antithesis of the capitalist, imperialist and (neo)colonialist Western powers, the mechanisms of drawing borders and differentiation are nevertheless comparable. Thus, in this course, our attention will be paid to theoretical discourses on drawing borders and to questions of the cinematic representation of the ethnic Other in the multi-ethnic Soviet Union as well as in today's Russia. In particular, we will scrutinise processes of exoticisation, self-exoticisation and acculturation under the pressure of modernisation. Apart from that, we will take a look at examples of the postcolonial “speaking back” and indigenous filmmaking. However, the central question that arises from today's perspective is who can and may speak about the Other.

Lectures; presentations by the participants; discussion of theoretical texts and films

Regular and active attendance; presentations by participants; essay at the end of the term

Lists for further reading will be provided for each topic.