Project Description:
The
BODY LANGUAGE research project addresses the metamorphoses
of body language in Russian and Soviet society through
the 20th century as evidenced by documentary and fiction
films, private and professional photography, visual
arts, literature (fiction, advice literature, educational
publications, memoirs, diaries, reportages) and theatre.
The purpose of this research is not the investigation
of the different ways of behavior or methods of acting
but rather the study of a program to elaborate new
anthropological types - the man of the modernity and
homo soveticus. Within the first year of work we will
produce a DVD with 6 chapters that investigate the
following topics:
Locomotion: Walking, Standing, Sitting, Lying.
Everyday Rituals: Greetings and Farewell, Table
Manners, Social Dance, Kiss.
Utopian projects of a new body language (theater),
the practical application (instruction films on
hygiene, calisthenics, manners, Soviet Taylorism)
and fiction films.
Rhetorical Gestures of Soviet leaders.
Forms of the Bodily Communication.
Rhetoric of Emotions (conventional gestures of
theatrical melodrama and their use in fiction
and documentary films).
Image: Lev Kuleshov, from a series Expression of
Hands, 1921
Core Personnel:
- Oksana Bulgakowa (Film historian, Slavic Languages
and Literatures, Stanford)
Contributors:
- Anna Muza (Theater Historian UC Berkeley, Stanford)
- Dietmar Hochmuth (Filmmaker)
- Greg Hochmuth (undergraduate student, 2nd year,
CS major)
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