BIMI Presents

Programmes at Birkbeck's Institute of the Moving Image, 43 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PY

Ukrainian Modernists on Soviet Screens

Friday 31 May * 6.30pm * Birkbeck Cinema

It’s a pity the Royal Academy’s otherwise timely show ‘Modernism in Ukraine’ makes no reference to the explosion of Ukrainian talent in early Soviet film. However, a programme at Birkbeck’s BIMI on Friday 31 May aims to remedy some of this omission. One crucial figure in this was Alexandra Exter, hailed by James Meek in the current Royal Academy magazine, as a ‘blazing talent’ who linked Paris, Moscow and Kyiv. One of the first to bring news of Cubism to Kyiv, she moved to Moscow to design avant-garde theatre settings and teach at the Vkhutemas modernist art school. This led to her designing the ‘Martian’ settings and costumes for Aelita (1924), Soviet cinema’s pioneering and widely influential sci-fi film.

One of Exter’s Kyiv pupils, Grigori Kozintsev, would join forces with Leonid Trauberg, originally from Odesa, in 1921 to launch an irreverent Futurist troupe, the Factory of the Eccentric Actor in Petrograd. After the FEKS’ outrageous film debut with The Adventures of Oktyabrina (poster above), they were chosen by the leading scholar Yuri Tynyanov to direct a radical version of The Overcoat, fusing this classic story with another, Nevsky Prospect, by Ukraine’s greatest writer Nikolai Gogol.

Understanding the tangled history of Ukraine’s pioneering artists during the 1920s isn’t easy, after they have routinely been conscripted into a ‘Soviet avant-garde’. But ahead of the Royal Academy exhibition that opens on 29 June, this programme demonstrates how crucial Ukrainian talent was to Soviet cinema’s legendary first decade.

With live piano accompaniment by Costas Fotopoulos for Chess Fever, The Overcoat and an extract from Aelita.  

On sale: Eccentrism Turns 100 – all about FEKS with their original manifesto

Ukrainian Modernists on Soviet Screens

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It’s a pity the Royal Academy’s otherwise timely show ‘Modernism in Ukraine’ makes no reference to the explosion of Ukrainian talent in early Soviet film. However, a programme at Birkbeck’s BIMI on Friday 31 May aims to remedy some of this omission. One crucial figure in this was Alexandra Exter, hailed by James Meek in the current Royal Academy magazine, as a ‘blazing talent’ who linked Paris, Moscow and Kyiv. One of the first to bring news of Cubism to Kyiv, she moved to Moscow to design avant-garde theatre settings and teach at the Vkhutemas modernist art school. This led to her designing the ‘Martian’ settings and costumes for Aelita (1924), Soviet cinema’s pioneering and widely influential sci-fi film.

One of Exter’s Kyiv pupils, Grigori Kozintsev, would join forces with Leonid Trauberg from Odesa in 1921 to launch an irreverent Futurist troupe, the Factory of the Eccentric Actor in Petrograd. After the FEKS’ outrageous film debut with The Adventures of Oktyabrina, they were chosen by the leading scholar Yuri Tynyanov to direct a radical version of The Overcoat, fusing this classic story with another, Nevsky Prospect, by Ukraine’s greatest writer Nikolai Gogol.

Understanding the tangled history of Ukraine’s pioneering artists during the 1920s isn’t easy, after they have routinely been conscripted into a ‘Soviet avant-garde’. But ahead of the Royal Academy exhibition that opens on 29 June, this programme demonstrates how crucial Ukrainian talent was to Soviet cinema’s legendary first decade.

Birkbeck Cinema 43 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PY 6.30pm

With live piano accompaniment by Costas Fotopoulos for Chess Fever, The Overcoat and an extract from Aelita.

On sale Eccentrism Turns 100: FEKS and the Early Soviet Avant-Garde

 

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