N. M. Iezuitov on the Cultural and Political Tasks of Creating National Cinematographies in the USSR (with Reference to Belgoskino)

This article examines a significant era in the development of Soviet cinema during the 1920s and 1930s, a period that coincided with the emergence of national cinematography in the USSR. The development of national film studios during this period occurred in parallel with the conceptual development of ideological and artistic tasks for creating films based on local ethnocultural material. One of the key figures who consistently advocated the idea of creating national cinematography in the USSR and developed the concept of a new cinematic language in the 1920s and 1930s was Nikolai Mikhailovich Iezuitov (1899–1941), a film historian and one of the founders of Russian film studies, who turned his attention to the development of the Belgoskino film organisation. The purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, it aims to analyse Iezuitov’s views, which are not widely known in scholarly literature, on determining the form of artistic and ideological development and the cultural and political tasks of Soviet cinema in the 1920s and 1930s. Secondly, it will evaluate the film historian’s view of the development of national cinematography with reference to the Belgoskino film studio. A conceptual analysis of the problem is carried out based on the works of N. M. Iezuitov, scholarly literature about him, data from Soviet periodicals and publications of the 1920s and 1930s, and archival sources from the State Archives of the Arkhangelsk Region (Materials for the Party Conference on Cinema for 1926). The authors conclude that in the early stages of its development, the history of Belgoskino generally corresponded to the principles and ideas formulated by Iezuitov in a number of his works and included the following principles: the rejection of entertainment and clichés, the search for new techniques, the mastery of the method of socialist realism and Marxist-Leninist philosophy, the proclamation of the socialist growth of the Soviet national republic as the central theme, the cinematic representation of the village, the widespread use of newsreels, and the ideological and creative quality of the films produced are all important aspects to consider.