Russian Film Symposium 2003
Program One

35mm at Pittsburgh Filmmakers

Mon May 5	Tue May 6	Fri May 9	Sat May 10
			5pm Aleksei Balabanov: Brother 2, 2000.
8pm Aleksandr Dovzhenko: Farewell, America, 1949-50. Discussion by Vance Kepley, Jr.	8pm Lev Kuleshov: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924. Live musical accompaniment by Robert Kubacki (accordion). Discussion by Lucy Fischer	7.30pm Aleksandr Dovzhenko: Farewell, America, 1949-50. 9.15pm Aleksei Balabanov: Brother 2, 2000. Discussion by Gerald McCausland.	7.30pm Pavel Lungine: Tycoon, 2002. Discussion by Bill Judson. Farewell banquet.

Screenings take place at the Melwood Screening Room.

The quartet of films being shown at Pittsburgh Filmmakers' MelwoodScreening Room spans a period of almost eighty years (1924-2002). Eachreflects the constituent tropes and traumas of the cultural moment inwhich it was made, yet when considered together the films in the seriesturn out to be linked in ways that testify to certain enduring motifs ofRussian anti-Americanism. That those motifs still resonate today isdemonstrated not only by the two post-Soviet films in the series –Aleskei Balabanov's Brother 2 (2000) and Pavel Lungine'sTycoon (2002) – but by current events. The sitting US andRussian presidents' short-lived period as "soulmates" hasrather publicly ended due to discord over Iraq. Yet the undercurrent of"Yankee-phobia" in Russia has in fact found consistentexpression throughout the post-Soviet period, and flare-ups have beentriggered not only by geopolitical and military catalysts such as theeastward expansion of NATO, the bombardment of Serbia, and the USinvasion of Iraq, but also by more civilian humiliations such as the2002 Winter Olympics, and even the comical depiction of a Russiancosmonaut in the 1998 American film Armageddon. The by-nowcodified status of the US as "the world's only superpower" isa constant, stinging reminder of Russia's perceived obsolescence on theworld stage. American audacity, as it is often constructed by Russia'salternating superiority and inferiority complexes, contributes to a relationship that wehave termed more succinctly (and less clinically) as "arrogance andenvy."

The two Soviet-era films in the series – Lev Kuleshov's TheExtraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks(1924) and Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Farewell, America (1949-50)– enact the "centripetal fantasy" of Soviet Marxism,depicting the "first socialist society" as an irresistibledraw for forward-thinking foreigners, even (or especially) those fromthe very maw of the capitalist West. The fact that both films were madefollowing actual demographic shifts in the opposite direction –the first and second waves of Soviet emigration – exemplifies theresponsive (and revisionist) nature of anti-American cultural productionin Russia.

The symbolic "dialogue with America" has been conducted onthe level of form as well as content. Kuleshov in Mr. West and Balabanovin Brother 2 expertly incorporate Hollywood techniques in theirfilmmaking, as if to demonstrate mastery of the "enemy's"representational strategies while impugning the socioeconomic and moralenvironments in which those strategies developed (theüber-capitalist hero of Lungine's Tycoon also demonstratesthis Russian capacity to out-American the Americans). Kuleshov's film isa veritable sampler of American film genres, including the western andthe slapstick comedy, while Balabanov uses the visual and narrativevocabularies of the action film, the road movie, and even the videogame. Narratively, the two films neatly bookend the eight-decade periodthat separates them; Brother 2 might be retitled Mr. East inthe Land of the Capitalists, and comes to the same conclusion as itspredecessor: America's financial might and flair for spectacle are nomatch for the deep-tissue sincerity and righteousness of Russia. AsRussian cultural producers struggle to define, develop, and market apost-Soviet "national idea," they have found that Russia'svarious and competing self-images are still inextricably bound to itsview of the US.