Elena Valentinovna Golovneva,
Doctor of Philosophy, Saint-Petersburg State University, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“Cinema Atlas of the USSR”: Educational and Geographical Film “Western Siberia” (1937)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-5-3
The article deals with a special segment in the development of Soviet documentary cinema in the 1930s – educational geographical films for Soviet schoolchildren. As an example of this type of cinema the film “Western Siberia” (1937) is considered. It was created at the Sibtekhfilm studio, directed by Z.M. Kalik and co-director G.I. Smirnitsky, as well as the cameraman V.A. Pridorogin, with scientific advice from prof. P.N. Stepanov. In the paper the materials from the State Archives of the Novosibirsk Region are used. As a context in which the film was made, parallel processes in Soviet cultural policy, cinema and the media are considered. Structural features of the educational geographical film are distinguished: the natural-zonal principle of organizing geographical material, the synthesis of physical and economic dimensions in its structuring, the animated map as a cinematic device, ideological inscriptions for the film and professional scientific evaluation. It is concluded that the creation of educational geographical films has become a significant stage in the history of Russian visual anthropology. The film concluded the ideological, conceptual and creative aspects, which were important for the production and analysis of educational films in the USSR in the 1920–1930s. Being historical documents of their time, educational geographical films about the regions of the USSR successfully fulfilled their state mission regarding representation the image of the Soviet region on the screen.
Publishing: 28/10/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 25/05/2022
How to cite: Golovneva E.V. “Cinema Atlas of the USSR”: Educational and Geographical Film “Western Siberia” (1937) // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 5 (25), pp. 40–49. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-5-03.pdf]
The research was carried out at the expense of the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (RNF) No. 21-18-00518 “Cinema Atlas of the USSR: The Experience of Positioning a Multinational state” (https://rscf.ru/project/21-18-00518/).
Links: Issue 5 2022
Keywords: visual anthropology; Soviet documentary films of the 1930s; “Cinema-Atlas of the USSR”; ideology; educational geographical films; film studio “Sibtekhfilm”; film “Western Siberia” (1937); Z.M. Kalik