Contemporary Authors

• 'Russian Americans' in Soviet Film: Cinematic Dialogues between the US and the USSR (KINO - The Russian Cinema) - October 30, 2015 I.B.Tauris, https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Americans-Soviet-Film-Cinematic/dp/178453031X

• Wordery - https://wordery.com/russian-americans-in-soviet-film-marina-l-levitina-9781784530310

  Marina L. Levitina teaches Russian cinema at Trinity College Dublin. She is also a documentary film-maker.

• Irish Independent - http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/all-aboard-the-love-express-29120391.html

  All aboard the love express
  True romance as photographer Colm and future Russian wife kissed for first time on a train to St Petersburg

  March 11 2013 5:00 AM

  IT wasn't quite love on the Orient Express, but romance blossomed between Russian film-maker Marina Levitina and Irish photographer Colm Hogan on the overnight train between Moscow to St Petersburg in 2003.

  "It was very romantic travelling overnight on a steam train, and then arriving in St Petersburg as the sun was rising at 7am," says Colm, who adds that their first kiss occurred on board the train. "The national anthem was playing on tannoys as we arrived, and women wearing headscarves were waiting, and it was all very cinematic and beautiful."

  Colm and Marina first met a year previously, when he picked her up after she flew in from Moscow at 3am to Shannon Airport. She went home with him to the house he was sharing with his then girlfriend on Inismacnaughton Island in the Shannon Estuary, and slept on the sofa until the following morning. Then they headed to Ballyvaughan to begin filming work on the documentary John O'Donohue: Anam Cara, which Marina co-produced with documentary-maker Betsy Scarborough. They had engaged Colm to work as a stills photographer on the film.

  Colm and Marina kept in touch by email after filming wrapped on the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)/TG4 project, and she headed home to Moscow.

  A year later, his previous relationship having finsihed, he decided to accept her invitation to visit. Romance bloomed in that warm Russian sunshine – and on the train! – with Colm falling for Marina's exotic charms. He also fell for Moscow, and thought that while some of the buildings were austere, the people were so warm and welcoming.

  "I thought Marina was beautiful and radiant, and there's a grounded sincerity about her," he says, explaining his initial attraction. "She was kind and compassionate and intelligent – what more could you want?"

  "And I thought that Colm had a lovely voice the first time I heard him on the phone, even before I met him," recalls Marina. "He was exceptionally articulate and so honest and kind. We had amazing conversations, right from the beginning."

  Marina and Colm met several times over the next year and a half, and then she was accepted to Harvard, Boston, to do a two-year Master's in Russian culture and cinema. Colm was working in the UK on the film Asylum, with Ian McKellen and Natasha Richardson, so they met in Paris while she was en route to Boston. And then, to add to the cinematic theme of their relationship, Colm proposed over dinner in Montmartre.

  Over the next two years, he visited Marina for weeks at a time in Boston, and they were married in the summer half-way through that period. Having dispensed with the legalities that morning, the spiritual ceremony took place in 2004 in Ballybeg House, Co Wicklow, and was presided over by none other than the late poet, priest and philosopher John O'Donohue.

  It was attended by Marina's family from Moscow, including her dad Leonid, a civil space engineer, and mum Ekaterina, a doctor, and her older brother. Colm's dad John, a research forester, and his mother Vera and siblings also attended.

  He is the second eldest of seven children, and while he was born in Waterford, his family lived all over the country because of his dad's work. He boarded at the Salesian College in Co Laois. Colm played music for a few years as a drummer, and then got into photography, which led to him working as a stills photographer and cameraman for film, TV and theatre.

  After the honeymoon in Prague, Marina was due to fly back to Boston to embark on the second year of her master's, but the besotted newlyweds found the parting too hard to bear. So Colm impulsively bought a ticket at the airport, and flew off with his new bride to spend the next two months with her. And on the very day of her commencement (graduation) ceremony, Marina boarded the plane to leave the US and join Colm in Galway for good.

  "No relationship is ever easy, especially when you are spanning two cultures and three continents," says Colm. "It took a lot of time to adjust, but we love each other very deeply. I'm head down, raging forward and getting on with life the whole time, whereas Marina is calmer and more relaxed."

  Marina did a PhD in Trinity in 2005 and taught at Trinity and NUI, Galway. It was while studying art history at university in Moscow that she first met Betsy Scarborough, when her family was featured in a documentary Betsy was making for PBS about the Russian people during the collapse of the Soviet Union, called Spirit of a People: A New Portrait of Russia. She became fascinated by film-making, and went on to do her first Master's in video production and mass communications in Boston.

  Two years ago, she and Colm set up Counterpoint Films, and their current four-part series on the Russian-Irish connection is currently running on TG4. Radharc na Ruise, funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and TG4, is a fascinating series that examines the similarities between Russian and Irish culture, including an exploration of the links between the two countries. And no better people to understand and give a true insight into that particular area than Marina and Colm.

  Apart from the film work, for which they have lots of exciting plans, Marina is still teaching at Trinity, and is involved in environmental issues back at Galway.

  "I feel really blessed with having Colm as my husband, and always thank God for having met him," she says. "To meet someone who becomes your soulmate is amazing."

  The third and fourth parts of 'Radharc na Ruise' will be aired on TG4 on Thursday March 14 and 21 at 9.30pm (with repeats the following days at 11.30pm).

  Irish Independent

Levitina, Marina L.: "Russian Americans" in Soviet film:
cinematic dialogues between the US and the USSR
A.H. Chapman
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1175.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text: 
Levitina, Marina L. "Russian Americans" in Soviet film: cinematic dialogues between the US and the USSR. I. B. Tauris, 2015. 320p bibl
filmography index ISBN 9781784530310 cloth, $99.00
53-3435
PN1993
MARC
In the introduction to this volume, Levitina (Trinity College Dublin) notes that in 1925 Stalin described an exemplary laborer who combined the
traits of a "Russian revolutionary" with "American efficiency." The author traces the widely used trope of the "Russian American," which
signified a new type of Soviet person: a construct of Marxism and Fordism. She grafts her study onto well-known historiographical treatments of
Soviet film (1920s-30s) by Vance Kepley, Yuri Tsivian, Denise Youngblood, et al., carving out a niche on foreign influences in Soviet cinema.
The action, adventure, and dynamism of American films initially appealed to "the revolutionary ethos" of Russian intellectuals. Levitina shows
how these traits of Americanism operated in Soviet films long after political disavowals of international revolution. Particularly interesting is
Levitina's discussion of the Soviet "glorified hero," a happy inhabitant of Soviet society based on American film heroes. This character, Levitina
argues, originates in American films of the 1920s and is one surviving element of Americanism in Stalinist-era films of the late 1930s. Though
useful, the study might have more critically engaged the question of why these tropes were couched in a national essentialist terminology. As the
Soviet Union enriched itself culturally and technologically, why did nationalist-oriented tropes take shape? Summing Up: ** Recommended.
Graduate students, researchers, faculty.--A. H. Chapman, College of William and Mary
3/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1488773447609 2/2
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Chapman, A.H. "Levitina, Marina L.: 'Russian Americans' in Soviet film: cinematic dialogues between the US and the USSR." CHOICE: Current
Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2016, p. 1175. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449661566&it=r&asid=1fd4be4e3d1badedad05f16b0354e501. Accessed 5 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449661566

• The I. B. Tauris Blog
  https://theibtaurisblog.com/2015/03/20/the-films-of-douglas-fairbanks-sr-in-early-soviet-russia/
  Word count: 1046

  The Films of Douglas Fairbanks SR in Early Soviet Russia
  Posted on March 20, 2015 by THEIBTAURISBLOG Leave a comment
  In the 1920s, stars of silent American cinema, including Douglas Fairbanks Sr, Mary Pickford, and Pearl White offered the Soviet viewers alternative models of new femininity and masculinity.

  Igor Ilyinsky, The Kiss of Mary Pickford, Film, 'Russian Americans' in Soviet Film: Cinematic Dialogues Between the US and the USSR, Marina L. Levitina, Russian, American

  In the early twentieth century, there existed a certain perception in the Russian popular imagination of a new, modern set of qualities, which included some of the same human traits that earlier impressed the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville in Americans. Among these traits were efficiency, physical fitness, optimism, and the frontiersman’s adventurous, pioneering spirit. After 1917, these traits were praised as new exemplary qualities that citizens of the young Soviet state needed to acquire. In the Soviet press of the 1920s, a widely used trope ‘Russian Americans’ signified Soviet citizens of a new kind. People described in this way were usually the efficient and technologically skilful workers, [1] the 1920s’ prototype of the ‘extraordinary men and women’ of the Stalinist Thirties.

  The general image of a positive American set of qualities was reinforced among the wider Russian population in the 1910s and 1920s by imported American films. Between 1922 and 1928, American imports comprised 43.7% of all films shown on Soviet screens. [2] Russian viewers soon fell in love with Pearl White, Douglas Fairbanks Sr, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, William S. Hart, and a number of other American stars. The characters created by these stars were energetic, optimistic, and often successful within the rags-to-riches narratives of many popular films.

  Douglas Fairbanks Sr was one of early Soviet Russia’s favourite foreign film stars. Several of Fairbanks’ early features were shown in Moscow prior to 1925,[3] but it was largely thanks to his four hits imported since 1925, The Thief of Bagdad [USA 1924], The Mark of Zorro [USA 1920], Robin Hood [USA 1922], and Don Q, Son of Zorro [USA 1925] that Fairbanks enjoyed such an enthusiastic reception in Russia. By 1928, when asked by journalists what they liked about foreign films, Soviet children most often mentioned Douglas Fairbanks, whose courage they wanted to emulate. [4] A 1929 children’s survey showed that Fairbanks’ films The Thief of Bagdad and The Mark of Zorro were their top two favourites, followed by the Soviet adventure film Little Red Devils [Krasnye diavoliata, 1923]. [5]

  The footage shot of Fairbanks and Pickford during their arrival to Moscow in 1926 was used by Lev Kuleshov’s student, Sergei Komarov, in a popular comedy called The Kiss of Mary Pickford [Potselui Meri Pikford, 1927]. The plot revolves around a Chaplinesque movie theatre usher Goga Palkin (Igor Ilyinsky), whose sweetheart Dusya (Anel Sudakevich) is an admirer of Fairbanks and rejects Goga after watching The Mark of Zorro. Throughout the film, Goga goes through a number of identity changes, trying to look and act like Fairbanks (practicing his smile and his leaps), and submitting himself to a number of uncanny tests so as to become a famous ‘stuntman.’

  By the end of the film and following a kiss from Mary Pickford, Goga becomes a local celebrity and wins Dusya’s love. Goga’s willingness to undergo an identity change, so as to resemble Fairbanks both physically and in his celebrity status, parodies (and thus proves the existence of) similar tendencies on behalf of male viewers in Soviet Russia of the 1920s. Fairbanks’ star image became an ideal of physical attractiveness, as well as of positive modes of behaviour.

  One of Fairbanks’ outstanding qualities was his physical fitness: throughout all of his films shown in Russia, he personally performed numerous stunts and athletic feats. In The Thief of Bagdad, Fairbanks’ character Ahmed climbs high walls, steels food that is being cooked on a balcony two floors high, and easily leaps over the heads of numerous men in prayer. Fairbanks created an image of exemplary male physicality, sporting strong muscles, which were a prominent visual attribute.

  Even prior to the appearance of Fairbanks’ films in Russia, Soviet film journals praised American cinema for its focus on ‘sportsmen’ heroes and its plot construction often centering on courage, dexterity, and resourcefulness. An article in a 1923 issue of Kino magazine juxtaposed the ‘sportsman’ of American cinema to the ‘usual European actor-intellectual with weak muscles.’ The author of the article, Veronin, called for the new Soviet cinema to be based on the work of new actors, inspired by American cinema. [6] With the appearance of the fit and muscular Fairbanks on Soviet screens, it was natural for his star image to become a model for new Soviet film heroes, considering that critics were adamantly calling for the creation of film heroes with similar traits. In 1925, another Soviet critic, Ter-Oganesov, suggested that Fairbanks was an example of a new ‘sportsman’ hero, a daredevil who ‘does everything that a hero of his type should do, and does it amazingly.’ [7] Another critic, Abramov, praised Fairbanks as the ideal hero of American cinema and pointed out the lack of such an ideal hero in Soviet cinema so far. [8]

  In addition to physical fitness, Fairbanks’ Ahmed, as well as his Zorro and Robin Hood, all share another set of qualities, namely optimism, joyfulness, and a good sense of humour. Contemporary Soviet descriptions of Fairbanks emphasize his ability to make the viewers laugh: ‘Humour is an ever-present part of his pictures. Laughter, healthy and good laughter, traverses all his films as a kind of a central line,’ writes Ter-Oganesov in Kino-zhurnal ARK. [9]

  Optimism and joyfulness were character traits that, in the 1930s, came to be officially encouraged in filmic portrayals of the New Soviet Person. Such human traits were best highlighted in the genre of comedy. Comedy was one of the genres most favoured by Boris Shumyatsky, the head of Soiuzkino (the main organization overseeing cinema affairs in the 1930s) for the new Soviet ‘cinema for the millions.’ [10] Soviet cinema of the 1930s saw a rise in the number of new heroes that were athletic, optimistic, and efficient. Films and stars that had left a strong impression, continued to have an effect on future filmic hero representation.