Authors

Vincent Bohlinger¹;  ¹ Rhode Island College, United States

Discussion

An Average Shot Length (ASL) is a quantitative measurement determined by dividing a film’s a total running time by the total number of shots—excluding the opening and end credits. Scholars such as Barry Salt, David Bordwell, Yuri Tsivian, and Charles O’Brien have demonstrated how comparisons of ASLs allow for another methodology by which to examine film style, chart changes and trends across time, and compare different national cinemas.
My goal in this presentation is to explore the possibility of examining ASLs in Ukrainian cinema of the 1920s as a means to help distinguish Ukrainian cinema from Soviet cinema overall. Many scholars distinguish national cinemas on the basis of content—that Ukrainian films have some kind of subject matter or theme particular to Ukraine as a geopolitical state and culture. I seek to determine whether Ukrainian cinema might stand apart from Soviet cinema independently of the content of any individual film, but instead on the basis of style.
In trying to determine whether there are any stylistic norms that distinguish Ukrainian cinema from Soviet cinema overall, I am to study at least 100 Ukrainian and other Soviet films from the 1920s. It is possible that any difference between Ukrainian cinema and other cinemas from the constituent republics of the Soviet Union are negligible or insignificant, but that is a finding still worth confirming.
One purported justification of the ongoing heartbreaking and infuriating invasion of Ukraine by Russia is the denial that Ukraine has ever had a separate culture. In keeping with the conference theme of ‘disruption’, my goal is to attempt to locate yet another means by which we can recognize Ukrainian cinema apart from the monolith of Soviet cinema. I hope that my work can help offer quantitative evidence of potentially distinct national cinemas existing within the Soviet empire, thereby complicating and informing questions of transnational, national, and regional filmmaking.