Arina Savinova's Report: 'Images of Women in Soviet Military Cinema (1941 — 1945)'

On June 26, 2024, as part of the regular seminar 'Dialogue Between Russia and Europe: the View of Young Researchers', Arina D. Gornostaeva (Savinova), a 1st-year student of the Master's degree in Cultural Studies, a research assistant of the laboratory made a presentation

The speaker examined the images of Soviet women in films about the Great Patriotic War, released during the war years. Films about the Second World War began to be shot at the beginning of the war in order to mobilize the population. The analysis of films can help to identify the formation of specific film images and representations of the war in cinema, as well as be useful for historiographical analysis.
Traditionally, war was associated with men, and women's military experience remained marginalized, but the massive participation of women in the Great Patriotic War is historically unique and destroys traditional ideas about gender roles: 1 million women served in the Red Army, 28 thousand fought with partisans, many women remained on the 'home front', where they did men's jobs.
The report examined how Soviet women were represented in Soviet war films, and how their images were embedded in the military narrative in the roles of soldiers, mothers, wives, mistresses. Are women given agency in war films, taking traditionally 'male' roles in war, and can women structure the narrative of the film and 'manage the stage space' the way men usually do?

Films used for the discussion:
The Girl from Leningrad (dir. by Victor Eisymont, 1941); She Defends the Motherland (dir. by Friedrich Ermler, 1941); The Rainbow (dir. by Mark Donskoy, 1943); Wait For Me (dir. by Boris Ivanov, Alexander Stolper, 1943); Zoya (dir.  Lev Arnshtam, 1944); Dark Is the Night (dir. by Boris Barnet, 1944); Heavenly Slug (dir. by Semyon Timoshenko, 1945).