Lecture by Anastasia Kostina
Chair Gisela Winckler

In 1932, an acclaimed Soviet documentarian and a pioneer of found footage compilation film Esfir Shub announced that she would like to make a documentary about women. In her “cinematic document about Soviet women,” she planned to focus on four heroines from different walks of life, combining observational filming with a captivating dramatic narrative. By the end of 1933, Shub and her co-author, Soviet writer Boris Lapin, completed a seven-chapter script titled “Women”. Alas, Shub’s documentary account about Soviet women never came to fruition. All that remains is a collection of documents which include the script, some notes, and a handful of photographs the director selected for the film.

Drawing on voluminous archival evidence, this talk reclaims the story of Shub’s unrealized feminist manifesto Women while exploring the history of documentary cinematic mode during the country’s transition to Socialist Realism. Reconstructing a continuous history of the project, the talk sheds light on arguably the most obscure period of Shub’s directorial career and demonstrates how Shub’s inventive documentary vision came into conflict with the ideological guidelines of the state. Finally, it argues that, while Shub’s innovations never manifested themselves on the screen, they were significant in offering an alternative developmental path for documentary film and enriching our understanding of feminist film history.

Fall Thursday Lecture Series events are open to Columbia-affiliated faculty, students, and invited guests. All others interested in attending, please email the SOF/Heyman at [email protected].

Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.