Professor of Theatre James Brandon and Visiting Assistant Professor of German Stephen Naumann partnered this semester to present a series of four Russian and Polish films.
“We both enjoy film,” Naumann said. “Dr. Brandon knows Russian film. I know Polish film.”
The professors’ respective interests in Russian and Polish film dovetail neatly. Both countries are Slavic nations, and both are largely underrepresented on the Hillsdale campus. Thus the Slavic Film Series was born.
“We wanted to give students and others an opportunity to experience the films,” Naumann said, “and to see Polish culture and politics through the Polish lens.”
Both professors hope that Hillsdale students will encounter the foreign cultures as they present themselves in the authentic language and style of the films.
“I hope they come with an open mind,” Brandon said. “I hope they give it some time. Watch a movie that’s not catering to your every whim! We have the sense that film watching is easy––we just sit there and eat popcorn. There are rewards to engaging with a difficult film.”
There are challenges to appreciating a foreign film, such as overcoming the language barrier. But these are balanced by insights into the culture that produced the film as well as those gained by a different perspective on your own culture.
“If you look at every film, at every poem, at every song as an element of that culture, you get a new perspective,” Naumann said. “You have a greater access to the other culture if you get inside of it in some way. Understand the country through its own language and you can see something more about its experience, about your own experience.”
In the past 20 years, Russian and Polish films have been allowed freedoms that they were not granted while under Soviet influence. As a consequence, film culture has evolved.
“Russian films are able to say things that they haven’t been able to before,” Brandon said. “In post-Soviet Russia, there are now two kinds of film. There are those who make film for the international art house circuit: their language is international. There is another kind that makes popular movies for Russian audiences. Those movies are more polished; they look more like Hollywood.”
In addition to the development of more distinctive cinema aesthetics, national culture has had an opportunity to express itself through film.
“A lot of really important topics [in Polish film] go back to World War II,” Naumann said. “What we lose track of is that these nations behind the Iron Curtain had their own dramas. From the Western perspective, all of the pressure was being applied from the outside. At the same time, there was a lot of pressure from the inside.”
Two of the films, one Russian and one Polish, already showed. The remaining two will be after Spring Break. For more information, contact either Brandon or Naumann.
