Champions of socialist competition in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution

1968 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8
Keyword(s):  
Socialist Competition ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
October Revolution

Big Hopes and Trouble, 1961–1969

2021 ◽  
pp. 30-76
Author(s):  
Catriona Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Production Planning ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
The Other ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Film Production ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Government ◽  
Set Up ◽  
General Director

In 1961, the government bodies responsible for film production (the Ministries of Culture of the USSR and RSFSR) forcibly imposed on a reluctant Lenfilm the complete reorganization of production planning. The old Scripts Department was shut down and three “creative units” set up. This change was pushed through by Lenfilm’s energetic and flamboyant new general director, Ilya Kiselev, who had begun his career as an actor. Of the creative units, the earliest to emerge was the Third Creative Unit, which soon had a role as the flagship of contemporary cinema, a genre heavily promoted during the Thaw. However, the Third Creative Unit ran into increasing trouble as political control tightened after Khrushchev was forced to resign, and in 1969, it was closed down altogether. Yet life was not always calmer in the other units, as witnessed in particular by the difficulties that gripped the Second Creative Unit’s efforts to produce movies commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967, and by the problems of the First Creative Unit in establishing its own character and repertoire. At the same time, the general political line at this period, while unpredictable, was not uniformly harsh, as manifested in the conclusion of Leningrad’s Party leader that audiences could “make up their own mind” about a film he disliked.

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