Woman With a Movie Camera

by Goldovskaia, Marina Evseevna

• ISBN13: 9780292713437
• ISBN10: 0292713436
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-30
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

Marina Goldovskaya is one of Russia's best-known documentary filmmakers. The first woman in Russia (and possibly the world) to combine being a director, writer, cinematographer, and producer, Goldovskaya has made over thirty documentary films and more than one hundred programs for Russian, European, Japanese, and American television. Her work, which includes the award-winning films The House on Arbat Street, The Shattered Mirror, and Solovky Power, has garnered international acclaim and won virtually every prize given for documentary filmmaking. In Woman with a Movie Camera, Goldovskaya turns her lens on her own life and work, telling an adventurous, occasionally harrowing story of growing up in the Stalinist era and subsequently documenting Russian society from the 1960s, through the Thaw and Perestroika, to post-Soviet Russia. She recalls her childhood in a Moscow apartment building that housed famous filmmakers, being one of only three women students at the State Film School, and working as an assistant cameraperson on the first film of Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia's most celebrated director. Reviewing her professional filmmaking career, which began in the 1960s, Goldovskaya reveals her passion for creating films that presented a truthful picture of Soviet life, as well as the challenges of working within (and sometimes subverting) the bureaucracies that controlled Russian film and television production and distribution. Along the way, she describes a host of notable figures in Russian film, theater, art, and politics, as well as the technological evolution of filmmaking from film to video to digital media. A compelling portrait of a woman who broke gender and political barriers, as well as the eventful four decades of Russian history she has documented, Woman with a Movie Camera will be fascinating reading for a wide audience.

Author Biography

Marina Goldovskaya is Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA

Table of Contents

Foreword by Robert Rosen	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(14)
Father	15	(3)
Childhood	18	(4)
Our House	22	(6)
Bolshevo	28	(4)
Those Times	32	(4)
I Will Be a Camerawoman	36	(9)
Where to Next?	45	(6)
Lessons of Television	51	(3)
Teaching	54	(4)
The Weavers	58	(7)
My First Film Portrait	65	(3)
Professional Infatuations	68	(5)
Them	73	(10)
The Ordeal	83	(8)
Compromises	91	(5)
Sharp Angles	96	(4)
On the Threshold of Change	100	(7)
Arkhangelsk Muzhik	107	(14)
Oleg Efremov	121	(3)
Solovki Power	124	(33)
Life Is More Talented Than We Are	157	(5)
Perestroika: Another Life	162	(6)
A Taste of Freedom	168	(9)
Once More about Scripts	177	(3)
Earthquake	180	(3)
The House on Arbat Street	183	(11)
Life with a Camera	194	(4)
Technology and Creativity	198	(4)
The Prince	202	(11)
On Ethics	213	(3)
Life with a Camera (Continued)	216	(2)
Documentary Trip	218	(9)
Filmography of Marina Goldovskaya	227	(6)
Appendix: Notable Figures in Soviet Filmmaking and Other Arts	233	(22)
Index	255