Silent Soviets on Screen: One Hundred Years of Russian Revolution

Description

Combining innovative techniques with powerful and political stories, the first generation of Soviet artistes saw film as a way to change the world rather than simply show it.

They turned silent film into a propaganda tool, celebrating the 1917 Russian Revolution while offering visions of a society built around a pioneering breed of proletariat people. By 1925, Lenin himself declared cinema to be the most valuable vehicle for promoting Communism.

Centenary of Russian Revolution will screen enduring masterpieces such as Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary propaganda film Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Man With a Movie Camera (1929) by documentary film pioneer Dziga Vertov.

Apart from showcasing major works, the panorama also highlights works of Eistenstein’s and Vertov’s lesser-known contemporaries, including Lev Kuleshov, founder of the Moscow Film School, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Boris Barnet, the director behind the fresh and funny film The House on Trubnaya (1928).

The panorama is completed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Arsenal (1929), a movie that is regarded as one of the most important pieces of Ukrainian revolutionary cinema.