The landscape background: a reading of landscape in Russian and Soviet cinema from the concept of background as aesthetic category

Authors

  • Carlos Muguiro Universidad de Navarra, Facultad de Comunicación, Departamento de Cultura y Comunicación Audiovisual, 31080, Pamplona

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14591/aniki.v4n1.253

Keywords:

Landscape, Background, Horizon, Russian and Soviet Cinema

Abstract

The idea of background (horizon) is consubstantial to the birth of landscape in the Western World – a concept inherited by cinema since its inception. Considering that notion, this paper attempts to approach the representation of nature in Russian and Soviet cinema. The main idea is that the background works as an aesthetic category in itself, from which it is possible to diachronically and historically analyze this cinema. From a methodological point of view, this article is based on the double distinction established by Maurizia Natali between the figure and the background, and the background's background. Temporally speaking, it is focused on the potentialities of the idea of background until the consolidation of Socialist Realism, in the mid 1930s of the last century.

Author Biography

Carlos Muguiro, Universidad de Navarra, Facultad de Comunicación, Departamento de Cultura y Comunicación Audiovisual, 31080, Pamplona

Dr. Carlos Muguiro is Lecturer in Film Aesthetics at the University of Navarra and head of the Department of Documentary Film at the ECAM (Madrid Film School). He holds a Ph.D. in Humanities (Extraordinary Doctorate Award) from the Pompeu Fabra University. The title of his dissertation was "Aesthetic of Nature in Russian and Soviet Cinema: the Third Landscape". He was visiting scholar in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge. His main research interest are Russian and Soviet culture and landscape in cinema. He was curator of the first retrospective on Alexander Sokurov in Spain and the project 'Ver sin Vertov' in the Casa Encendida cultural centre in Madrid, an exhibition which encompassed the tradition of the Russian and Soviet documentary film over the last fifty years, from Dziga Vertov’s death to 2005. In the wake of this event, Muguiro published Ver sin Vertov (1955-2005) Cincuenta años de no ficción en Rusia y la URSS. He also edited the books Ermanno Olmi, Seis encuentros y otros instantes; El cine de los mil años. Una aproximación histórica y estética al cine documental japonés; The Man Without the Movie Camera/ The Cinema of Alan Berliner and more recently Las formas de la estalgia. Construcción y manifestaciones de ‘la nostalgia de lo ruso-soviético’ en la cultura cubana contemporánea and Mi abuelo murió leyendo a Pushkin (Antología de escritores cubanos post soviéticos). As a filmmaker, he has worked with Sergio Oksman in the making of O futebol (2015), A Story for the Modlins (2012) and Notes on the Other (2008).

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Published

2016-11-08

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2017): Landscape and cinema

Section

Special Section