While the history of cinema often focuses on the uniquely American phenomenon of Hollywood, the Soviet Union developed a film industry of its own which produced global talents and many key additions to the global canon. Lenfilm, one of the Soviet Union’s major studios and production companies, was the centre of Soviet ‘art house’ cinema. Professor Kelly will guide us through the workings of the Soviet film industry, as well as its artistic output during the Brezhnev era, when despite outward appearances of ‘stagnation’ the Soviet Union was in a period of cultural ferment.
Professor Catriona Kelly is Honorary Professor of Russian and Soviet Culture at Cambridge. She studied Russian at the University of Oxford and the University of Voronezh. Professor Kelly was a post-doctoral fellow at Christ Church, Oxford before joining SSEES in 1993. She returned to Oxford in 1996 and was elected a senior research fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2021. Her work has concentrated on the realities of everyday life and culture in the Soviet Union, addressing topics as diverse as the life of children, women’s writing, manners and food.