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THE COLLECTIVE “THE IDIOT”: ON THE SCREEN ADAPTATION OF F. M. DOSTOEVSKY’S NOVEL // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2014. Issue 2 (2). P. 65-74

The article is systematized experience of screen adaptations of the novel “The Idiot” by F. M. Dostoevsky in globe cinema. The chronological frameworks are the first screen adaptation at the dawn of Russian cinema (1910, dir. Chardynin) and the pioneering work of the Estonian director Rainer Sarnet (2011). An overview of novels’s cinema fate is preceded by thoughts about dramatic plasticity of the great writer works. This character defines a steady interest to his work among cinematographers. We can talk about some common tags, on the language of cinema they give the visibility, the timelessness of one of the finest characters of Dostoevsky. Experiments with decorations from different eras and cultural contexts in which heroes are placed by different directors, allow us to talk about a special collective contribution of the cinema art to the decoding of the writer’s philosophy.

Keywords: globe cinema, F. M. Dostoevsky, cinema language, literature, screen adaptation, cultural codes

PORTRAIT OF WOMENS: REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE ITALIAN CINEMA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 2 (4). P. 82-93

We continue to consider a cinema of Italy in optics of gender researches. In this case standard cliches of “ideal” metaphors of the female are analyzed. Among them: subject of loneliness and victim, images of the seductive star and pure maiden, melancholy for beautiful mother and female courage. It is obvious that the format of article doesn’t allow even to list all considerable movies from the Italian cinema tradition. We dared to stop in several pictures in which a peculiar portrait gallery is presented, from our point of view, representatively.

Keywords: cinema history, Italian cinema, gender researches, standard cliches, metaphors of the female

THEMATIC ACCENTS AND SEMIOTIC CONTEXTS IN MODERN ITALIAN CINEMA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 2 (12). P. 109-124

In this article the current situation and future possibilities of a modern Italian cinema are considered. In the term of “modern” we understand the relatively short period from 90th of the XX century till present days. Chronological coordinates are fixed, and we can talk about tendencies of revival of the Italian cinema as an art and as a communicative system which has its own canon and lexicon. The semiotic polyphony of visual imprints of events, persons, objects, and words can be profaned and facilitated taking into account the modern “mass consumer”. Therefore, we are talking about cinema in terms of loss, cheapness of the plan. We think that today we have a case of cinema directors successful works in which semiotics saturation of a cinema language allows speak about them in a high art category. The accent is emphasized on actual thematic preferences of a modern Italian cinema in this article. In each theme we illustrate almost each example of the last decade of the XX century and the beginning of XXI century. In our opinion, now the cinema directors tries to come into contact with the audience, counting on cultural unity with public, mutual knowledge of cultural codes, language of metaphors, symbols, and hints. Considering the major thematic directions of a modern Italian cinema, we can talk about two general tendencies, quite characteristic in general for the world cinematographic. First, it’s an attempt to save all considerable and talented issues that was already accumulated. Secondly, it’s an attempt to show that there are themes that request new approaches and a great courage from the art directors.

Keywords: semiotics of cinema, cultural contexts, Italian cinema, history of cinema, language of cinema, Christian Metz, Yury Lotman

YES, I AM GUILTY IN UNREASONABLE HAPPINESS... (M. BULGAKOV AND A. TARKOVSKY: PARALLELS OF DESTINIES) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 3 (13). P. 86-98

In this paper the example of the two brightest artists of Soviet Culture by Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrei Tarkovsky’s analysis of the historical parallels between the strategies of survival in post-revolutionary intellectuals of 1920s–1930s and in the so-called period of thaw 1960s. In the years become popular innovation, the diversity of genres and techniques, personality. However, the official ideology of rigidly delineated boundaries of the “originality”, building a hierarchical vertical Party – Spectator – Author. It is shown that common to both periods was a sense of the dynamics of life, optimism, innovation, talent and amazing confidence in their creative powers. Cultural needs at different times and different places of the problem to the artists, but the relationship with the ideological “zone” are being built all the same laws of hierarchy and censored. It is emphasized that it becomes common place and getting into the lists of the most unreliable of independent, original, refusing to coincide with the mainstream. In this sense, “The Passion of Andrew” to a certain extent repeats the fate of Bulgakov’s plays. With respect to the two artists worked two opposite forces. On the one hand, the query time, pushed them to the surface, was in need of their creative talent and courage. On the other hand, this prevented the passion to notice that the life of Soviet people and all the built-in ideological dogma, going beyond that is dangerous. Revealed that the dominant strategy in a changing ideological situation in relation to the striking individuality, creative initiative, innovation, was the official silence and quiet the ban. Both biographies are manifested in full measure. As a conclusion they say that to Tarkovsky and Bulgakov now apply these definitions, as a legend, a model of responsibility and fidelity to the vocation.

Keywords: Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrey Tarkovsky, cinema of 1960, Soviet culture, official ideology, revolution of 1917, censorship

DOSTOEVSKY IN FRENCH CINEMA: THE BEGINNING OF THE TRADITION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 4 (14). P. 90-104

The article analyses the formation of the screen version of Dostoevsky works in the French cinema tradition. The chronological framework of the presented illustrations is outlined by two events in the history of French cinema. First – the early 30th of the XX century when the first adaptation “Crime and Punishment” by Fedor Otsep came out. Second – the late 60th when Robert Bresson offered his own reading and understanding of the Russian writer. It is shown that approaches to understanding Dostoevsky’s philosophy in cinematography are developed in the context of the overall history of the “relationship” of French visual arts with the Russian writer’s work. The play of “Crime and Punishment” presented at the end of the XIX century on the “Odeon” theatre is accepted here as a reference point. The problem of screen adaptation of Dostoevsky’s works is connected in this article with the polemics of film critics about the possibilities and prospects of translating literary classics into the language of cinema.

Keywords: semiotics of cinema, Dostoevsky, French cinema, French theatre, literature and cinema, film adaptation of literature

LITHUANIAN SEMIOTIC STUDIES: FROM THE HISTORY OF DOSTOEVSKY’S THEATRICAL “TRANSLATIONS” IN LITHUANIA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 2 (16). P. 110-131

In the article it is investigated the place of a literary heritage of Dostoevsky in the Lithuanian verbal and visual culture. We chose two directions for our research: 1) the translations of books of the writer on the Lithuanian language; 2) “translations” (adaptations) of novels of Dostoevsky in the Lithuanian theatrical tradition. In the first part of article authors analyze different approaches to the translations of texts of Dostoevsky on the Lithuanian language. It is shown that in modern Lithuania almost all works of the great writer are translated; however there are problems and perspectives. In the second part of article we reconstructed in a historical retrospective the experience of theatrical experiments with texts of the writer in Lithuania. It is obvious that the Lithuanian national theater used on available literary translations. It is shown that the history of the Lithuanian theater isn’t thought without Dostoevsky’s heroes today. It is possible to tell surely that many performances according to Dostoevsky’s books were included into gold fund of theatrical tradition of Lithuania and World Theater.

Keywords: Dostoevsky, theatrical tradition of Lithuania, Lithuanian national theater, adaptations, Dostoevsky’s heroes, Vilnius theater of the Russian drama

SEMANTICS OF THE ICON, REVEALED IN FRIENDSHIP: FATHER SERGIUS BULGAKOV AND SISTER IOANNA REITLENGER // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 3 (17). P. 202-213

The article analyzes the formation of a Russian, Soviet artist Julia Nikolayevna Reitlinger (Sister Ioanna) as a master of icon painting. A key role in this turn of her art classes was played by a meeting with the philosopher Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov (Father Sergius Bulgakov), ordained in Russia in 1918. The depth and content of these relationships have undoubtedly played a huge role in their lives. And, of course, reflected in the creativity of both. Julia Reitlinger believed from the first meeting Sergius was his spiritual master. This meeting determined her path to a religious worldview and to icon. In 1935 she became a nun in the world named Sister Ioanna. It is shown that the spiritual friendship that linked them to the end of their life was expressed in the work of Sister Ioanna as the master of icon painting. The semantics of the icon embodies the idea of duality. For Bulgakov and his spiritual daughter, this idea of duality also expresses the experience of friendship as a deep spiritual union, as a reflection of the image of a friend. The entire creation of the artist Julia Reitlinger contains much of icon semantics. And the friendship with the spiritual father is also full of the riches of the palette that Sister Ioanna uses in her work. We can say that this is a unique event in their life, as a metaphorical miracle-working icon, created together by a philosopher and an artist. Here and metaphysical depth, and the idea of God, and the inverse perspective, in which the place is open to the other. And even the tragedies of their life paths symbolically repeat the depth of sadness that we see in the faces of the saints. At the same time, these are bright faces full of love, faith, hope. We can say that in these bright colors friendship with Fr. S. Bulgakov and the artist’s whole life path are realized and visually manifested.

Keywords: Julia Nikolayevna Reitlinger, Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov, semantics of the icon, friendship, Russian emigration, Orthodoxy

“UBIVETS” (“MURDERER”) AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE POLYSEMIOTIC INTERPRETATION OF DOSTOEVSKY’S NOVEL “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT” // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 1 (19). P. 156-172

During the 20th century, the prose of F. M. Dostoevsky became more and more established as a “theatrical genre” on the Latvian stage. At the beginning of the century and during the years of the First Republic (1920–1940), Riga’s theatregoers were offered stage versions of almost all of Dostoevsky’s novels. This process was facilitated by the attentiveness of the Riga Russian Theater to the classical repertoire as a whole, as well as by the presence of a number of prominent Russian actors – Mikhail Chekhov, Gregory Khmara, Vasily Kachalov, etc – in Riga. At this time, the Riga theater of Russian drama made several productions based on original dramatizations of Riga directors Mikhail Muratov, Rudolf Ungern, Elena Roshina-Insarova. In the Soviet period, the search of theaters in Latvia focused on two polar tendencies – polyphonic or monologic Dostoevsky. The stage version of the novel “Crime and Punishment” was carried out in 1978 by a playwright and director Mark Rozovsky, a poet Yury Ryashentsev and a composer Eduard Artemiev. The play “Ubivets” (“Murderer”) is a polycode text, a deconstruction of the polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”. According to the author’s genre definition at the time of writing, the play should be understood as a literary and musical performance (a musical). Applying the concept of M. M. Bakhtin for the composition of the play, Rozovsky deconstructs the novel into elements of the future polyphony. The word of Dostoevsky becomes two-voiced due to the combination of prose and poetry texts, to the linking of musical and literary languages, as well as through the synthesis of a high individual voice and the lower, penny dreadful, poly-voiced element of the crowd-choir. The visually stage text unfolds through the semantics of carnival, farce performance, town square performances, through the visualization of signs of culture of blessed fools and street aesthetics.

Keywords: F. M. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Mark Rozovsky, dramatization, M. Chekhov’s Riga Russian Theatre, Latvian theatre tradition, visual semiotics, polycode text