The Adventures of the Kulturfilm in Soviet Russia

The dynamics of kulturfilm production highlight the emergence of new investment priorities in early Soviet cinema. This chapter looks into the short but dynamic lifespan of this notion; covers the period of the second half of the 1920s and the early 1930s, when the first kulturfilms were in broad circulation, up to the time when they were gradually replaced by the ideas of "documentary" and "scientific" cinema. It introduces the semantic context of the idea, borrowed from the German film industry and appropriated by film professionals in the Soviet Union; it surveys the studio landscape, kulturfilm production practices, and cinematographic highlights of the genre, focusing specifically on the films that, through their survey of the Soviet periphery, contributed to the shaping of Soviet identity discourses. The chapter concludes by looking into the debates criticizing the concept of kulturfilm which foregrounded its gradual withdrawal from film reviews and studio production plans.