Storms over Eurasia: Geopolitical Approaches to Russian and Chinese Cinema, 5 op

The course introduces students to the (geo)politics and aesthetics of films from the Eurasian region. These films are explored through different methods of film and cultural analysis stressing charting changes in the ideological constellation, close textual and formal analysis through comparative juxtaposition, and geopolitically informed approaches to culture. Seminal works of Russian film are used to introduce the students to film form and analysis after which Russian film from its different territories, and Sino-Russian screen relations, become central points of study. Sino-Russian cinematic relations are looked at from a variety of angles from the impact of the early Soviet avant-garde to Chinese film, representations of Russians in Chinese films and vice-versa, comparative studies of critically acclaimed independent films about the marginalized and massively popular nationalist blockbuster war films to contemporary industry collaboration. In addition to comparative analyses, cinematic flows, and co-productions between these polities, the manifestation of Sino-Russian geopolitical ambitions and BRICS cultural statecraft will be examined in the field of cinema. As the course moves across different geopolitically contested locations such as the Arctic, we participate in a process of cognitive mapping and comparative analysis that will underscore these regions, their peoples and countries different positions in, and their relation to, the world system. Particularly the impact of economic liberalization, authoritarian capitalism, and the post-socialist condition in these films production, distribution, ideology, and aesthetics will be analyzed.

Course texts and lectures will introduce students to the social contexts and the major aesthetic and political currents informing these films as the course charts changes in the ideological constellation through these works. Concepts such as realism, socialist realism, montage, gender, genre, littoral studies, the nationalist blockbuster, censorship, cultural statecraft, modernism, militainment, globalization, popular geopolitics, postmodernism, and nationalism will be explored and instrumentalized to screen analysis.