Queering Russian cinema as a community-building practice

ABSTRACT

LGBTQ media discourses in contemporary Russia have been extensively researched from the perspectives of media and queer studies. Scholars have theorised whether ‘queerness’ can be appropriated from the West and localised in Russia for the benefit of local LGBTQ communities. Building on existing scholarship, this article examines media discourses on queer film as initiated and maintained by representatives of Russian LGBTQ film audiences. I investigate how LGBTQ opinion leaders appropriate the term kvir (queer) in the context of viewing and interpreting contemporary, post-Soviet, and Soviet Russian cinema. I analyse how ‘queering’ is used as the optics for discerning obvious or ciphered visual and verbal expressions of non-heteronormative gender and sexuality on screen, at the same time reclaiming narratives of the recent and remote past, as both shared and individual LGBTQ histories.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer cinema
• Russian LGBTQ audiences
• queering
• film criticism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. More information on the current situation with LGBTQ rights and LGBTQ rights activism in Russia can be found in Vlad Strukov’s introductory article to this special issue.

2. This was suspended by the 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine, which resulted in a certain level of international isolation of the RF.

3. For example, until February 2022 Russian viewers had access to the Netflix, HBO and Amazon streaming platforms. Pirate or illegally shared copies of films and series can still be accessed on the Russian social media platform VKontakte. Queer feature films and documentaries have also been accessible as part of Russian LGBTQ-film festival programmes.

4. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the channel was renamed and rebranded as the creator’s personal blog, albeit still focusing predominantly on queer film and book reviewing.

5. As the study focuses on Russian LGBTQ communities rather than the mainstream film industry and wider audiences, I decided against sampling media content on mainstream media sources, e.g., Iskusstvo kino or Seans.

6. For example, the article “Chto smotret’ v 2021-m: kvir-fil’my goda” (26 January 2021) and the article ‘Oskar-2021’: slishkom malo kvira’ (23 April 2021) demonstrated an interchangeable usage of the terms kvir, LGBT, gei (gay), lesbiianka (lesbian), and trans (transgender).

7. Here and further in the text, individuals are referred to as ‘queer’ only when they have clearly and publicly come out as such.

8. The author of the media text uses the words ‘sofia vlasievna’ as a loose reference to the female characters in the Soviet detective film he discusses.

9. Nikita Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers’ Union, as well as three-time laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (1993, 1995, 1999) and a Full Cavalier of the Order ‘For Merit to the Fatherland’. He has been a strong supporter of Vladimir Putin, including of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion in Ukraine in 2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Andreevskikh

Olga Andreevskikh is a senior lecturer in Russian Language and Culture at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on queer media and culture, in particular media representations of non-heteronormative masculinities.