Translating Literature into the Language of Film: Russian Classics on the World Screen

The offered course explores the highlights of Russian classical Literature and its interpretations on the world’s screen. We shall dwell on famous pieces such as "The Bronze Horseman," "The Blizzard," "The Queen of Spades" and "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin, "The White Nights," "The Double," "Crime and Punishment" and "Idiot" by Dostoevsky, and others. Texts will be discussed in the context of World Literature. Throughout the course we shall watch and discuss several ballets by Rolan Petit, Boris Eifman, John Cranko, and others. We shall also watch movies by Igor Maslennikov (Russia), Martha Finnes (UK), Georges Lampin (France), Luchino Visconti (Italy), Ivan Pyriev (Russia), Leo Kulidjanov (Russia), and Akira Kurosawa (Japan). To discuss these various interpretations we shall have to acquire the dictionary of cinema language and define such notions as text, subtext, context, metaphor and materialized, visualized metaphor, and so forth. Students are expected to read the above mentioned texts, as well as some critical literature on them and the authors, and to write two papers, which will be orally discussed. We may visit the museum of Pushkin, the museum of Dostoevsky, and the museum of Ballet in St. Petersburg.