Who Is Peter Kenez's Failure Of A Turning Point In Soviet Films

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Peter Kenez states that when World War I began Soviet cinema had already been fully mobilized leaving the task of just changing the message (Kenez, 157). During the 1920s and 1930s Soviet films were more controlled by the state than by producers or writers. In 1941 a conference called by the Zhdanov marked a turning point in the film industry. It was determined that Soviet films should reflect “Soviet reality.” It was also decided to only make masterpieces (Kenez, 159). During the first few months of WWII Soviet films failed much in the way that radio broaddcasting did: it failed to tell how bad things actually were. Newsreel and documentaries were the starting point of Soviet war propaganda, but were replaced by films like She Defends the