The Art of Agitation: Female Filmmakers in Early Soviet Cinema

The social status and cultural position of the artist jettisoned following the formation of the Soviet Union. This new, budding socialist state materialized an unprecedented modernist art culture, deploying visual media as the primary form of social propaganda. Through situating revolutionary ideas in quotidian art objects, Soviet forces were able to integrate ideology into social life. Economics, politics, and science were quickly integrated into aesthetic culture, representing a modern approach to visualizing political institutions. While traditional art maintained cultural sophistication, graphic design, photography, and film quickly gained momentum as accessible modes of proliferating propaganda. Images held social status, and more so, images facilitated a new era of administrative power. All surfaces had become a screen. While the position of the artist quickly escalated in social currency, the possibility of female creators accelerated in tandem. Women’s revolutionary appetites jettisoned the start of the Russian Revolution, best demonstrated by the 1917 Women’s March in Petrograd. Additionally, various female battalions contributed to the October Revolution’s success by disguising their femininity and storming the Winter Palace alongside the Bolshevik militias. Through the close intersections of female activism and radical ideology, women were allocated various roles in Soviet cultural production. Primarily, women were allowed to attend new Socialist art schools, including VkHUTEMAS. These modernist, academic enterprises foregrounded their artistic pursuits in Socialist economic, political, and scientific policy. All creative output centered a quotidian, proletariat market. The emerging Soviet art culture prioritized agitation, propaganda, and collective ideology. Cultural products from VkHUTEMAS sought to integrate these emerging values into the traditional Soviet home. Through print culture, primarily children’s literature, Soviet propaganda would become an integral part of all visual and literary culture. Female students of the VkHUTEMAS were provided radical educational opportunities through the production of children’s texts. The generational implications of radical visual output prompted opportunities for women in the film industry. Animation became a generative platform for visualizing simple propagandistic narratives, while also highlighting the new visual language of the Soviet Union. While animation provided a unique opportunity for female filmmakers, women were also integrated into the industry through assistantships and co-directorial positions. Although collaborative pursuits provided early opportunity in the industry, women were also able to direct their own productions. Esfir Shub, Olga Preobrazhenskaya, and Olga Rakhmanova emerged as influential figures in early Soviet cinema, while also standing as preeminent examples of this new female artistic capacity. The following list catalogs female-directed films premiering between 1917 and 1939. This selected period of time highlights early Soviet ideology and aesthetics. As previously mentioned, a sizable number of these films include propagandistic animation. Additionally, these entries include political documentaries and Soviet narratives. Entries where women are credited as “Assistant Director” or “Co-Director” are noted by the inclusion of (Asst.) following the appropriate designation.