Authors

Kirill Goriachok¹;  ¹ University of Cambridge, UK

Discussion

In 1936, the first women's auto rally took place in the USSR. It was attended by 44 women aged 20 to 35, and consisted of drivers, mechanics, and journalists. One of the goals of the two-month rally was to demonstrate that women, like men, were capable of driving in extreme conditions. In addition, it was held to promote the new Stalin Constitution which affirmed the freedom and equality of women in the Soviet Union, and also banned the abortion. Among the women on the rally were also two young cinematographers from the Soyuzkinokhronika studio: Ottilia Reizman and Maria Sukhova. They were commissioned to make a propaganda film about the trip.  
In this paper I will explore the film Women's Auto Rally across the USSR (Zhenskiy avtoprobeg po SSSR, 1936), suggesting that Reizman and Sukhova represented a new generation of women documentary filmmakers in 1930s. At that time their cinematographic partnership was born. During World War II, they would work together filming partisan squads in Belarus. They were the most famous female duo in documentary film of the Stalin era.


This case study allows us to think about the ways in which women created roles within the Soviet film industry. Reizman, a Polish woman born in Minsk, Belarus, was a graduate of VGIK (All-Union State Institute of Cinematography), and would later become one of the most successful and celebrated young cinematographers. Maria Sukhova, on the other hand, did not have a film education, but had begun work as a film editor — the most common position for a female filmmaker at that time. 

Despite its inevitable ideological clichés, the film captured a reality in a very vibrant way: scenes of sisterhood on the road, the genuine smiles of women drivers, with some comedy scenes as well. Like the filmmaking team, all main characters were women, which was unusual for Stalinist documentary. It is notable, however, that despite its all-female production cast, and its subject matter, the film features a male voiceover narrator. As such, it raises questions about the nature of any distinctive female style or mode. Indeed, Reizman and Sukhova tried not to be different in their approach, although the focus on women participants was a novelty for the genre.

The making of the film illustrates the complex lives of women documentary filmmakers of the 1930s. It also unfolds certain examples of interruptions of women’s creative labour, which reflect wider structural inequities within Soviet film industry. The purpose of this paper is to tell the unknown story of several women documentary filmmakers, their desire for self-expression in film, and their attempts to find their place in the Soviet film industry.