A Genre is Born? Post-Soviet Russian Film Comedy

Speaker(s): Seth Graham, University College London

A Genre is Born? Post-Soviet Russian Film Comedy

Four of the seven top-grossing films produced in the Soviet Union were comedies. While the genre’s box-office popularity has continued since 1991, the percentage of comedies produced has fallen, and not many observers would privilege the genre as a particularly important signifier of (or influence on) the post-Soviet Zeitgeist. Still, film comedy can be productively examined in a different context: that of film history, and in particular as an indicator of both continuity and rupture in the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet culture. This talk will consider several Russian comedies of the past two decades in these terms, including works by Aleksandr Rogozhkin, Alla Surikova, Roman Kachanov, and the creative team behind the series of films based on the television sketch programme Nasha Russia (Our Russia). It will also examine the genre in the dynamic context of Putin-era popular satire.

Talk is in English