About the cinema, the Soviet village and not only that..: on the issue of the possibility of using feature cinema as a historical source (book review: Mazur L.N., Gorbachev O.V. Soviet films about the village: the experience of historical interpretation of an artistic image. Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2022, 350 p.)

Abstract

The monograph by L.N. Mazur and O.V. Gorbachev addresses an issue of the possibility of introducing such an unconventional source as the cinema in the capacity of the primary source of a historical inquiry. The reviewer proceeded from the thesis that the cinema is a “parallel reality” and it in no way reflects the real life. As the reviewer continued reading the book, he got the impression that the authors managed to quite convincingly put their thesis into practice and prove it. The reviewer analyzes in detail the content of the monograph, its successful plots and themes. Much attention is paid to the identification of the theoretical aspects of the issue, that are important not only for specialists, but for all historians. In some cases, the path from the appearance of an object in life to its appearance in the cinema is traced literally year by year. The main advantage of the monograph is the demonstration of the potential of the cinema as a historical source. The reviewer agrees with the opinion of the authors of the refereed paper that the cinema about the village shows us much more than the authors and customers of those films would like to show. It’s particularly evident in historical dynamics, when a historian considers all the films on the village theme “with one eye.” A conclusion is drawn about the theoretical, methodological and source study contribution of the authors to the investigation of audiovisual sources.