Watch

Mother Tongue
  • Yevgeniy Fiks, Juliet Jacques, Dan Healey and Sarah Wilson:
    Panel discussion in association with Mother Tongue project
Apparition of the Last Soviet Artist in London
  • Victoria Lomasko:
    Apparition of the last Soviet Artist in London
ShadowMemory x Art Night Open
  • Various artists:
    ShadowMemory Project Video 2018
Postponed Futures
  • Kasia Redzisz, Nikita Kadan, Mykola Ridnyi, Konstantin Akinsha:
    Roundtable discussion
Superwoman: ‘Work, Build and Don’t Whine'
  • Iwona Blazwick and Zelfira Tregulova:
    Roundtable Discussion
  • Dolya Gavanski, Phoebe Taplin, April de Angelis, Maria Shevstova:
    'Superwoman: The Changing Image And Role Of Women'
Unexpected Eisenstein
  • Rachel Morley:
    Russian Cinema before 1917
  • Ian Christie:
    Besides Eisenstein: Protazanov, Barnet and the new Soviet cinema of the 1920s
  • Ian Christie:
    Maxim and co: creating the new heroes and heroines of the 1930s
  • Phil Cavendish:
    Soviet Colour Film, 1929-1945: An Experiment Understood by Very Few
  • Jeremy Hicks:
    Meaningful Martyrdom — Death, Revolution and Victory from Lenin to the Reichstag, 1924–45
  • Emma Widdis:
    Film and the Making of the New Soviet Person: Bodies, Minds and Feelings
  • Ian Christie:
    Hopes and fears: the Soviet New Wave of the 1960s
  • Carmen Gray:
    Andrei Tarkovsky: The Citizen Poet and the State
  • Jeremy Hicks:
    Reusing War Footage in Russian and Soviet Films, 1945–2015
Peripheral Visions
  • Francis Morris:
    In conversation with Anthony D'Offay about Artist Rooms
  • Ekaterina Degot:
    In conversation with Olga Chernysheva
A Game in Hell. The Great War in Russia
  • John E. Bowlt:
    Introductory remarks
  • Elena Sudakova:
    'Forgotten Heroes of the Great War'
  • Christina Lodder:
    'A Painting Fit for Heroes: Kazimir Malevich's Reservist of the First Division'
  • Natalia Budanova:
    'Who Needs the Art Now?': Russian Women Artists Representing the Great War'
  • Valentina Parisi:
    'Russian Avant-Garde Circles and the Literary Response to the Great War'
Work and Play Behind the Iron Curtain
  • Alexandra Chiriac:
    Curator tour
  • Amber Jane Butchart:
    Soviet Fashion
The Shabolovka Tower Model
  • Tilly Blyth:
    Seminar Event: Science Museum
  • John Milner:
    Seminar event: Courtauld Institute of Art
  • Lutz Becker:
    Seminar Event: Independent Art Historian
  • Vladimir Shukhov:
    Seminar Event: Fosters and Partners
  • Xenia Vytuleva:
    Seminar Event: Columbia University
  • Henry Milner, Maker:
    Seminar Event
Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen
  • Curators and Special Guests:
    Panel Discussion with Exhibition
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: Chess Fever and The Three Million Case
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: Man with a Movie Camera
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: October
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: Storm Over Asia and Turksib
  • Lutz Becker:
    Curator talks: The End of St Petersburg
  • Elena Sudakova:
    Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen
Utopia LTD
  • 'Inside the Rainbow' Performance:
    Directed by Irina Brown
  • Professor John Milner:
    Seminar: 'Re-Constructivism'
  • Willem Jan Renders:
    Seminar: 'After Lissitzky: Reconstructions at the Van Abbemuseum'
  • Christina Lodder:
    Seminar: 'Gustav Klucis: Transmitting Utopia'
  • Aleksandr Shklyaruk:
    Seminar: 'Klucis and the Materialisation of a Futurist Idea'
  • Dr. Maria Tsantsanoglou:
    Seminar: 'Tatlin's Legend'

Listen

Superwoman: ‘Work, Build and Don’t Whine'
Unexpected Eisenstein
Bolt
Seminar
Judith Mackrell : Seminar
A Game in Hell. The Great War in Russia

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Boris Barnet

(1902–1965)

Boris Barnet was born in Moscow in 1902 to a family that owned a medium-scale typographical enterprise. His grandfather was an English printer who had immigrated to Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Barnet studied as an architect and painter and after the revolution he worked as a set designer at the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre. In 1920 he enlisted in the Red Army where he served as a medic. After contracting an illness, Barnet returned from the front and entered the Military School where he learned boxing. His boxing career lasted until he was spotted by Lev Kuleshov, who convinced Barnet to join his collective as an actor and cast him in a prominent role in one of the first great Soviet comedies, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks. Barnet studied at Kuleshov’s workshop and soon started working as a scriptwriter and then director. In 1926 he collaborated with Fedor Otsep to produce a serial adventure comedy Miss Mend (1926). Over the next four decades he would gain a repu- tation as one of the great Soviet directors, though today his achievements have been largely forgotten.

Barnet went on to work at Mezhrabpom studio, where he collaborated with Iakov Protazanov whose work he greatly admired. His first solo effort was a comedy: The Girl With the Hat Box (1927) starred Anna Sten and became a popular success upon its re- lease. His 1928 satirical comedy The House on Trubnaya was recently re-discovered and now ranks as one of the Russian silent film classics. The film demonstrated Barnet’s ability to employ a range of avant-garde tricks whilst retaining popular appeal.

Barnet continued making films in the sound era producing such movies as tragicomedy The Outskirts (1933), and By the Bluest of Seas (1936). Barnet’s favourite genres throughout his career were lyrical comedy and adventure films, whereas the propagandist films he attempted were less successful. His 1927 work Moscow in October was to appear alongside Eisenstein’s October and Pudovkin’s The End of Saint Petersburg, however the film was withdrawn due to its clear weaknesses compared to the other two. Unable to make propaganda films, Barnet didn’t fit comfortably within any prescribed form of socialist realism, and his reputation for making Western-style movies eventually turned the party officials against him. His post-war films were not well received by critics, and his popularity gradually declined. In 1965 he unexpectedly committed suicide at the age of 62, in Riga, leaving behind a note that said he seemed to have lost the ability to make good films.