Soviet parallel cinema
The two main groups and founders of the parallel cinema movement are Evgenii Iufit and the Necrorealists in Leningrad (now known as Saint Petersburg), and the circle of Aleinikov brothers in Moscow.
[2] These two groups achieved phenomenal fame in Russia in the 1980s – and during the dissolution of the Soviet Union – for their involvement in the parallel cinema movement and ‘late socialism’.
[3][2] Similarly to its Soviet counterpart, it maintained a focus on offbeat productions that dealt with real world representations of society including socio-cultural and political contexts.
During 1957, the Soviet state system formed a funding to provide support for professional filmmakers and subsequently for amateur film workshops.
[1] All forms of samizdat displayed defiance to the government-regulated distributed content as it embodied political opposition and an open discourse that aimed to deconstruct the Soviet Empire.
While the state defined production of art was ground on the doctrine of social-realism, the parallel cinema movement challenged the construction with a subversive potency.
The two most infamous groups and founders of the parallel cinema movement are Evgenii Iufit and the Necrorealists in Leningrad, and the circle of Aleinikov brothers in Moscow.
[11] Films adopting this ideology primarily focus on dark themes, black humour, monochromatic images and notions of the absurd.
[11] The necrorealists focused on challenging the ways death was represented throughout Soviet culture, specifically through the taboo aspects such as extreme violence, suicide or body decomposition.
[10] As such, at this stage Soviet parallel cinema remained an unofficial and underground renegade film club that challenged the constraints of the official system.
Soviet parallel cinema emerged from underground to the surface naturally during the shift in political power and historical changes - specifically during perestroika.
[1] Evgenii Iufit (also known as Yevgeny Yufit) was a Russian artist and filmmaker known for founding necrorealism – a driving ideology of parallel cinema.
[18] Due to the overarching control by the state's cinema organisation, Goskino, he founded the alternative style of necro-realism in the underground movement.
[5] The Aleinikov brothers’ films are subversive and provocative – as per the nature of the parallel movement – as a means of attacking the constraints of the mainstream state-run Soviet system.
After his death, Gleb Aleinikov published his late brothers’ diaries in 1999 which consisted of film ideas, plans, and anecdotes of the underground movement.
Boris Yukhananov is a prominent Russian director, educator and theorist most well known as a founding figure and strong contributor to the Soviet Parallel cinema movement.
[9] Due to the lack of money and underground nature of the production, filmmakers improvised by using crude equipment and the expression of the physical human body to create meaning in their films.
[18] They produced cheap 8mm and 16mm shorts that were in violation of the technical standards and rules of cinematic narration permitted by the government regime.
Films of this era exhibit experimental and obscure forms of montage that do not abide by the state-approved regulations that were placed on all aspects of filmmaking.
Through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the threat of authority - such as the KGB – diminished, the filmmakers unleashed the repressed creativity resulting in films depicting alcohol, profanity, violence and surrealism.
[33] In their rebellion, filmmakers of the time aimed to depict the harsh truth of the Soviet lifestyle, social landscape and political context.
The films derived from the parallel cinema era embody the Russian concept of "chernukha [ru]" (roughly "black stuff").
[11] As well as this, many films featured a dystopian world of un-human creatures committing heinous acts as a means of showing a Soviet reality.
