[Working title] Transformation Processes of the Icon Tradition in Soviet Film

In my dissertation, I examine the extent to which Soviet films from the 1920s to 1940s take up formal, narrative and aesthetic strategies of the Russian Orthodox icon tradition - especially in the staging of the Soviet hero. The starting point is the assumption that the icon not only serves as a visual reference, but is also politically functionalised in a secularised form: Elements such as the votive image structure or depictions of saints are transferred into the visual language of the film and placed in the service of a communist promise of salvation.