Women documentary film makers in the Stalin era

My research will focus on female documentary film makers in the Stalin era. Many of them are little known and little studied today. Alongside famous directors and editors such as Esfir Shub and Elizaveta Svilova there were many other women in industry, whose life and work have to be explored: Lidia Stepanova, Arsha Ovanesova, Irina Venzher, Ottilia Reizman, Olga

Podgoretskaya are among them. Women documentary filmmakers received recognition and awards from the authorities during the Stalin era. However, the attitude towards them, despite the feminist slogans of the Bolshevik Party, was dismissive. The lack of recognition of the creativity and artistic vision of

female directors continued along with suppression and male-dominance in industry. Even world-famous women were usually forced to return to work as ordinary film editors or even be fired. I wish to explore the hidden history of female documentary filmmakers during the period before 1953. Even though many women worked in documentary films of the Stalin era, a separate

school or movement did not appear. The question is, is it possible to talk about the female gaze in Soviet documentary film. Did women directors and film editors have their own specific themes, techniques or aesthetics? Was there any female professional solidarity, in what conditions did they have to

live and work? What sort of community they formed to survive in the totalitarian state? This is an unknown story that needs to be explored.