By the term “poetic cinema” I refer primarily to the ‘Poetic’ or ‘Archaic’ School in Soviet Cinema of the 1960s and 70s, which originates in the silent films of Alexandr Dovzhenko. The term itself alludes to the Russian formalist distinction between the two “genres” of cinema as poetry and prose, i.e. a cinema built around the symbolic and graphic-rhythmic imaginary and a narrative cinema based on the cause and effect.
Major filmmakers of the movement:
Armenian:
Sergei Parajanov
Artavazd Peleshian
Ukrainian:
Yuri Ilyenko
Leonid Osyka