Ukrainian Modernism on Screen
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Ukrainian Modernism on Screen 31 May 2024
Ahead of a major exhibition of Ukrainian Modernist painting opening at the Royal Academy on 29 June, BIMI surveys the impact of Ukrainians on Soviet cinema’s breakthrough years. FEKS founders Grigori Kozintsev from Kiev and Leonid Trauberg from Odesa may have been the major contributors, with their atmospheric adaptation of the great Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat (1926). But Alexandra Exter designed sensational costumes for the USSR’s first sci-fi extravaganza Aelita, Princess of Mars (1924), while Mykola Shpykovskyi wrote and co-directed the surreal comedy Chess Fever (1925). As well as Chess Fever and The Overcoat, with live piano accompaniment by Costas Fotopoulos, the programme will include an extract from Aelita and a 1983 interview with Leonid Trauberg. Copies of Eccentrism Turns 100: FEKS and the Early Soviet Avant-Garde will be on sale.
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington