Newsreel footage of the liberation of Minsk and its art history attribution

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems of studying the Golden Fund of National newsreels of the liberation of Belarus from the German-fascist invaders. The article provides an analysis of process of systematization and cataloging of the array of front-line film archiving in the post-war decades and gives a quantitative assessment of the collections of frontline newsreels stored in the Film archives of Russia and Belarus. There is information about previously unknown archival sources such as cinematographer’s reports which allow the attribution of newsreel’s material. The article evaluates the range of practical applicability of the author’s methodology of historical and artistic attribution which is presented on the example of well-known symbolic film frames taken in liberated Minsk on July 3, 1944.