Portraying Femininity. Woman as Artist in Early Russian Cinema

The heroines of Russian cinema from 1908 to 1918 were surprisingly often representatives of performing arts. This is primarily related to the historical context of the era: performing arts represented one of the most important spheres in which women could step beyond their socially prescribed space of home and gain a public profession. American researcher Rachel Morley in her book addresses various incarnations of this image — singer, dancer, "tanguist", ballerina, and finally, actress. By reconstructing the cultural landscape of that time, Morley seeks to understand how the representation of creative women in cinema was connected to different stages of the development of cinema itself. The author examines various approaches to depicting female artists and finds reflections of directorial experiments with the artistic and technical possibilities of film, as well as the search for a new cinematic language.
Rachel Morley is an expert on early Russian and Soviet cinema, teaching Russian cinema and culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London (UCL SSEES).