Narrative Scripting (On the Vs. V. Vishnevsky's Oeuvre) Sergey A. Ogudov Kritika I Semiotika, 2025 The article introduces the concept of “scripting”. This concept allows us to designate the narrator's activity that precedes the construction of a narrative. The specificity of the introduced concept is that it links together several problem areas, which are usually considered in isolation from each other. The concept is situated within the context of investigating the mental structures that accompany “explosions” in the culture such as wars, revolutions, individual traumas, and in the transmedial context of cinema. Cinema is considered as a condition for the formation of scripting, not only as a mental phenomenon, but also as a special practice of generating texts, specifically film scripts. In the article, the concept is applied to the oeuvre of Vs. V. Vishnevsky. On the basis of a study of a wide range of sources, including film scripts, diaries and letters by Vishnevsky, the typology of script forms is proposed. The term “personal script” refers to a program that regulates the verbal and bodily behavior of the narrator. The term “social script” is designed to facilitate social interaction, as exemplified by interactions between film crew members. Finally, the term “history script” is based on the forecasting of historical events and the appeal to history as material for films.
The film script as oral narrative of personal experience in Aleksandr Rzheshevskii’s oeuvre Sergei Ogudov Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2022 This article is devoted to the study of the film scripts by Aleksandr G. Rzheshevskii (1903–1967). In contrast to the concept of the ‘emotional scenario’, which emphasises the textual structure, this article suggests a reading of his scripts in connection with the problems of an oral narrative of personal experience. Such an approach allows us to consider important creative principles for Rzheshevskii’s work, in particular the link between the film script with biographical experience and orality, both at the level of composition and in the course of the presentation of the text. As compositional markers of oral speech, the article analyses elements of poetic syntax, indefinite pronouns, onomatopoeias, blasphemy and abusive terms, which are the result of storytelling about the events of the Civil War and its consequences.
Sergey Eisenstein: Director’s interpretation of Alexander Rzheshevsky’s screenplay Bezhin Meadow Sergey A. Ogudov and Vestnik Sankt Peterburgskogo Universiteta Yazyk I Literatura, 2022 This article examines the interpretation of Alexander Rzheshevsky’s screenplay Bezhin Mea dow by Sergey Eisenstein. Comparison of different versions of the script reveals the emergence of the film’s conception and changes of the narrative made during the transition from the screenplay to the shooting script. Special attention was given to Eisenstein’s interpretation of the three key episodes of the future film: siege of the church, highway episode, and defeat of the church. The reduction of narrative distance and the growth of the scale of an event are exemplified are exemplifies by the scene of the siege of the church. From this point of view the shelling of peasants from the church and the subsequent assault evoke episodes from Battle ship “Potemkin” and October. The interpretation of the highway episode is based on the use of visual and aural counterpoint. Eisenstein finds the equivalent of the spoken word through the use of the contrasting montage that combines images with speech, noise and music. Eisen stein strengthens the role of religious reminiscences in the central episode of the defeat of the church while showing the destruction of religious objects. Each of these episodes in a way or another implies violence and oriented to the expression of traumatic experience. In this sense Rzheshevsky’s screenplay echoed Eisenstein’s creative preoccupations. It made possible the depiction of historical events in such a way that history itself becomes a substitute for this experience. The study of the narrative in the screenplay allows us to reconstruct the content of the unfinished and forbidden film.
Narrative Distance in Screenplay: "the Heir to Genghis Khan" by Vsevolod Pudovkin S. A. Ogudov Kritika I Semiotika, 2021 The article is devoted to the narratological analysis of a screenplay. A distance between a narrator and a story world that constitutes a narrative is studied in regard to a conception of screenplay not as an autonomous literary work but as a series of texts corresponding to various stages of preparation for a film shooting (in our case a libretto, a literary script and a shooting script). The comparison of the literary script and the shooting script of the film “The Heir to Genghis Khan” written respectively by Osip Brik and Vsevolod Pudovkin reveals the shift of the narrative distance, that determined the way the events were shown. During the transition from the literary script to the shooting script the narrative distance is decreased due to the director’s idea on the film and also due the industrial context of filmmaking.
The conflict of points of view in screenplay narrative: A Fragment of the Empire by Ekaterina Vinogradskaia and Fridrikh Ermler Sergei Ogudov Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2021 This article is devoted to a study of point of view in screenplay narrative. Starting from the concepts of Monika Fludernik and Manfred Jahn, who investigated focalisation derived from the principles of morphological poetics, the analysis follows the gradations of point of view and its transition from narrator to character, using the example of the screenplays for the film A Fragment of the Empire. Changing point of view corresponds to the transformation of the literary scenario into the director’s script and is presented as conflict: in the scenes of the return of memory, the character transitions from a naive ‘folkloric’ vision of the world to madness, which later finds its reflection in the film.
On the problem of mimesis in narratology: Visual attractors in soviet screenplay of the 1920-1930s Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie New Literary Observer, 2020
From the guest editors Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie New Literary Observer, 2020
Cinematographic sign and narrative in the concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Yuri Lotman Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie New Literary Observer, 2017
