果冻影院

The developed discussion about female adolescence, or, as it is called in Russian, the 鈥渢ransitional age鈥� (perekhodnyy vozrast), did not exist in Soviet cinema till the post-Stalinist period. A figure of a girl-teenager and a narrative about female development replaced Stalinist mature heroines in the Thaw period and transformed several times throughout the history of the USSR. The presentation discusses the development of young female characters in Soviet films and the ideologies connected with them in visual culture. It analyses films as 鈥渂ody technique鈥� encyclopaedias or graphic manuals providing the female audience with embodied examples and anti-examples of female demeanour and teaching them what it means to act and look like Soviet girls and women. 聽

About the speaker:

Ella Rossman is a historian of gender and a doctoral student at 果冻影院 SSEES. Her PhD research is focused on late Soviet girlhood culture and the socialisation of women in the post-war USSR.聽She also carries an independent side project, mapping contemporary Russian feminist activism and feminist thought. Ella鈥檚聽work has been published in聽Ab Imperio, History聽of Science and Humanities, and New Perspectives听箩辞耻谤苍补濒蝉.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons (collage)