Authors

Discussion

This paper examines how the observational impulse within the Soviet poetic documentary movement of the 1960s and 1970s allowed for a new discussion of women’s position in Soviet society. In the wake of de-Stalinization, Soviet documentary film, as the Soviet culture at large, focused more on everyday life. Observational films, without overt didactic message and often filmed with a hidden camera, aimed to capture reality in a new light, moving away it from the rigid and stereotypical representations of socialist realism. The new focus on leisure and personal life as well as work and labour ushered in a new wave of representations of more complex female protagonists. Women’s lives were featured in several prominent documentaries of the time such as Leonid Kvekhidze’s Marinino zhit’e (Marina’s Life, 1966), Ivars Seleckis’s Valmieras meitenes (Valmiera Girls, 1970), and Liudmila Stanukinas’s Tramvai idet po gorodu (The Tram Runs through the City, 1973). By using close analysis of the films and drawing on archival research, this paper analyzes how the observational technique with its liberal impulse (with the use of the hidden camera, long takes and close-ups), helped negotiate the changing portrayal of women in Soviet documentary.