A multimedia project that investigates body language in Russian and Soviet society through the 20th century.

The BODY LANGUAGE research project addresses the metamorphoses of body language in Russian and Soviet society through the 20th century as evidenced by documentary and fiction films, private and professional photography, visual arts, literature (fiction, advice literature, educational publications, memoirs, diaries, reportages) and theatre. The purpose of this research is not the investigation of the different ways of behavior or methods of acting but rather the study of a program to elaborate new anthropological types - the man of the modernity and homo soveticus. Within the first year of work we will produce a DVD with 6 chapters that investigate the following topics

1. Locomotion: Walking, Standing, Sitting, Lying.
2. Everyday Rituals: Greetings and Farewell, Table Manners, Social Dance, Kiss.
3. Utopian projects of a new body language (theater), the practical application (instruction films on hygiene, calisthenics, manners, Soviet Taylorism) and fiction films.
4. Rhetorical Gestures of Soviet leaders.
5. Forms of the Bodily Communication.
6. Rhetoric of Emotions (conventional gestures of theatrical melodrama and their use in fiction and documentary films).

Core Personnel:

• Oksana Bulgakowa (Film historian, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford)

Contributors:

• Anna Muza (Theater Historian UC Berkeley, Stanford)
• Dietmar Hochmuth (Filmmaker)
• Greg Hochmuth (undergraduate student, 2nd year, CS major)