ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts at analysing post-Soviet films and TV series dedicated to the medical profession. It analyses the construction of gender identities through the images of the professionals in cinematic texts – including mainstream and art films as well as television series produced in Russia. The chapter also analyses representations of the medical profession in post-Soviet cinema. It explores how perceptions of gender and the representation of work practices among this professional group have changed. The chapter discusses new cinematographic images as partly based on Western cultural impact and partly on Soviet cultural legacies. Special attention is paid to the construction of new gender identities in the period of transition, including the divide between the living reality of the professions and their cinematic representations. The gendered images of doctors in the cinema of late socialism often included a reflecting and a somewhat infantile intellectual male character who is unsuccessful in his personal life, and sometimes in his professional career.
