Lev Kuleshov and the ontology of silent cinema

This dissertation focuses on the film theory and films of Lev Kuleshov (1899–1970) during the silent era, with a specific focus on his efforts to locate and define the essence of the cinema. In film history textbooks, Kuleshov is usually known as the original inventor of the concept of montage and the so-called “Kuleshov effect.” However, this dissertation challenges this traditional narrative, and instead emphasizes Kuleshov’s larger and more comprehensive project, whose purpose was to find the answer to one question: what is cinema? He saw cinema as a fundamentally modern, industrial and technological art form, and his ontology of cinema pivoted around the interaction of two main elements: cinematic material and composition. At the same time, this dissertation also explores Kuleshov’s work as filmmaker, highlighting the metacinematic aspects of his most important silent films. Ultimately, Kuleshov’s films can be approached as an alternative theoretical discourse, which, while connected to his written work, is not necessarily subordinate to it. Beginning from his 1926 masterpiece By the Law, Kuleshov’s films rather self-consciously explore the fundamental ethical implications of the film medium, to which he pays little attention in his writings.