THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE FAMILIAR: REFRAMING SOVIET AVANT-GARDE CINEMA BETWEEN AESTHETICS AND IDEOLOGY

Pavel Malin, Wang Changsong — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This study reinterprets Soviet avant-garde cinema of the 1920s through the analytical lens of Russian Formalism, challenging the prevailing scholarly dichotomy that frames these films either as ideological propaganda or as purely aesthetic experimentation. Employing a formalist conceptual analysis, the study investigates key cinematic devices in selected films by Eisenstein, treating rhythmic, intellectual, metric and tonal montage types as the primary units of analysis. The method integrates formalist principles with sequence analysis to determine how familiar sociopolitical motifs function within the perceptual logic of poetic cinema. The findings reveal that revolutionary and socialist imagery in avant-garde films operates not as direct ideological messaging but as perceptually automatized material necessary for generating defamiliarization effects. Devices such as rhythmic, intellectual, metric and tonal montage reconfigure these familiar motifs into sites of renewed perception, confirming their role as formal prerequisites rather than propagandistic ends. The analysis further shows that the historical displacement of Formalism by Marxist and post-structuralist frameworks shaped later misreadings of Soviet cinema, obscuring its original system-bound aesthetic rationale. It concludes that Soviet avant-garde cinema’s political motifs should be understood as integral components of a wider formal system grounded in perceptual estrangement. This approach provides a historically informed analytical model for reassessing early Soviet film beyond ideological binaries and offers a foundation for further research on how aesthetic systems emerge from and respond to their cultural zeitgeist.

CULTURAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGY IN DISTINGUISHING LIFE STYLE AND LIFESTYLE IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

Priyo Subekti, Dian Wardiana Sjuchro, Nguyen Minh Tri — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0700

This paper investigates how the indigenous community of Kampung Naga, West Java, Indonesia uses cultural communication techniques to preserve a traditional way of life under growing modern challenges. The study reveals five main themes by means of a qualitative phenomenological approach and thematic analysis: value inheritance through role modelling, symbolic communication in cultural practices, selective adaptation to modern culture, ecological and spiritual relationships with nature, and the role of social rituals in maintaining cultural identity. In-depth interviews, participatory observation, and documentation involving nine informants-elders, birth attendants, women, youth, and returnees from metropolitan areas-data were gathered.

The results indicate that instead of passive preservation, the Kampung Naga community maintains its way of life by means of a dynamic process of cultural negotiation. Daily activities and intergenerational role models help people to assimilate cultural beliefs rather than formal education. Symbols like holy woods, birth ceremonies, and bans on power use are communicative devices mediating identity, spirituality, and resistance. These techniques mirror socio-cultural, semiotic, and phenomenological communication traditions in which meaning is manifested in action and group memory

ASPIRATION Journal

THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS OF THE FAMILIAR: REFRAMING SOVIET AVANT-GARDE CINEMA BETWEEN AESTHETICS AND IDEOLOGY

CULTURAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGY IN DISTINGUISHING LIFE STYLE AND LIFESTYLE IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES