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

Read

Vsevolod Pudovkin

(1893–1953)

Vsevolod Pudovkin was a prominent Soviet filmmaker and theoretician. He was born in Penza and later studied physics and chemistry at the Moscow State University. Just before his graduation in 1914 WWI broke out and Pudovkin joined the army without passing his final exams. Wounded and taken as a prisoner, he spent three years in a German camp before escaping and returning to Moscow by the end of 1918.

Pudovkin had always had artistic inclinations and was fond of theatre, painting and music, but it was not until he saw D.W.Griffith’s Intolerance in 1920 that he became interested in film. He realised the great potential in cinema and in 1920, at the age of 27, Pudovkin decided to abandon his secure job in the laboratory of a military plant and entered the State Film School to become an actor. Two years later he joined Lev Kuleshov’s workshop and soon became his most outstanding student. Under his master’s guidance, he went on exploring the theories of montage, and the possibilities of editing and juxtaposing images into emotional statements.

When still at school, Pudovkin worked as a film director, actor and screenplay writer. His first released film was the short comedy Chess Fever (1925). The Mechanics of the Brain, a documentary exploring Dr. Pavlov’s theories of action and reaction, came immediately after. His real breakthrough came the following year, with the adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s novel Mother (1926), considered today as one of the most significant achievements of Soviet silent cinema, alongside Eisenstein’s works. It exemplifies Pudovkin’s use of elaborate crosscutting of images to represent complex ideas. His other major films include The End of Saint Petersburg,; shot the following year, and Storm over Asia (original title Potomok Genghis Khana, 1928). In all of these masterpieces, he collaborated with the cinematographer Anatolii Golovnia and the screenwriter Natan Zarkhi.

Pudovkin continued making films once the silent era was over in the early 1930s. His epic Soviet propaganda works, such as Minin and Pozharskii (1939), Suvorov (1941) and Admiral Nakhimov (1947) were greatly prized by the authorities and gained Pudovkin — a visual poet of the regime — various state awards, though none of them were quite as remarkable as his early works.
Throughout his career, Pudovkin enjoyed not only directing but also acting. He appeared in a few of his own films, including Mother and Admiral Nakhimov, as well as in his colleagues’ films, such as Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1948).

Pudovkin taught at the State Film Technicum and published a number of treatises and articles on film theory. In his two seminal books, Film Technique and Film Acting, written for Soviet film classes and first published outside the USSR in 1929, Pudovkin explained his principles regarding scenario, directing, acting, and editing. In 1929 Pudovkin went on a European Tour with lectures in England and Holland. A member of the Communist party, Pudovkin was honored with two Orders of Lenin and three Stalin Prizes. In 1948 he was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the USSR. Pudovkin died in Moscow in 1953.