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| The 2019 poster of Nikolai Izvolov's reconstruction of: Dziga Vertov: Godovshchina revolyutsii / The Anniversary of the Revolution (Russia 1919). Two reels of Vertov's first feature film were screened in Sacile in 2004. Source: http://www.kinobusiness.com/movies/godovshchina-revolyutsii/ КАРО.Арт, 2019. From: Википедия, Свободная энциклопедия. |
DZIGA VERTOV II
Moderator, live translator, narrator and explicador: Yuri Tsivian
Grand piano: Günter Buchwald
Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 10 Oct 2004
Prog. 2 (c. 76’)
KINO-NEDELIA / [CINE-SETTIMANA / KINO-WEEK] NO. 33, 34, 35 (Russia, 1919)
Prod: The Moscow Film Committee [Kinokomitet] of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment [Narodnyi Komissariat Prosveshcheniia, Narkompros]; 35 mm, totale: 485 m, 21’ (20 fps), Österreichisches Filmmuseum.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
KINO-NEDELIA — 33 / [KINO-WEEK NO. 33] 165 m., 7’
AA: 31 Jan 1919, the art of observation, trains stuck in the snow.
KINO-NEDELIA — 34 / [KINO-WEEK NO. 34] 160 m., 7’
AA: 7 Feb 1919, Norway, Danton.
KINO-NEDELIA — 35 / [KINO-WEEK NO. 35] 160 m., 7’
AA: 14 Feb 1919, Trotsky, fine visual quality.
Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "Heavy snowfalls, which hampered life both at the front and at home, were the recurrent news of the Kino-Week issues of 31 January and 7 February 1919. We see forced labor — a measure taken by the Soviet government to clean streets and sidewalks in Moscow, watch the Red Army’s battle with snowdrifts blocking the tracks, and are shown villagers digging their village out so that children can go to school. The funerals of field commanders are another theme in Kino-Week’s January and February issues — distinct from peace-time obituaries, these events appear before, not after, the rest of the news. The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany stirs a protest demonstration in Kiev, shows Kino-Week of 14 February 1919 — and everyone seems to be ready to invade Germany to help Communists there. That the civil war in Russia was merely a result of Russia’s internal crisis, caused by Russia’s lack of success in World War I, was not as obvious in 1919 as it is to us today. In those days, many believed that what was going on in Russia was the beginning of the last war on earth — the World Revolution predicted by Karl Marx." – YURI TSIVIAN
GODOVSHCHINA REVOLIUTSII / [L’ANNIVERSARIO DELLA RIVOLUZIONE / THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTION] (Russia, 1918)
Rullo / Reel 2: "GODOVSHCHINA FEVRALSKOI REVOLIUTSIIV PETROGRADE" / ["THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION IN PETROGRAD"]
Dir: Dziga Vertov, A.I. Aleksei Savelev; prod: The Moscow Film Committee [Kinokomitet] of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment [Narkompros]; rel: 7.11.1918; r. / rl. 2, 35 mm, 308 m., 13’ (20 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
"Vertov’s first feature, The Anniversary of the Revolution, is a found-footage film put together from fragments taken from Kino-Week issues, which explains why many of these only survive in parts. Unfortunately, the same thing happened to The Anniversary of the Revolution, whose footage was so often recycled in later movies dedicated to this event that little of it survives intact to this day. The part we are showing (reel 2 of the original film) deals with the February Revolution of 1917 — the one that resulted in the Tsar’s abdication and the transfer of power to a more-or-less liberal Provisional government, overthrown by the Bolshevists in October. Film historians will remember the head of this government, Aleksandr Kerensky, impersonated by a look-alike in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1928 October. This is our chance to see how Kerensky looked in real life (the resemblance is rather close, one has to admit, including the peacock-like deportment)." – YURI TSIVIAN
AA: High contrast. 25 Feb 1917 Petrograd, Znamensky Square, Kerensky, 4 March 1917 funeral, provisional government, Pavelsky-Pavlovich, Sosnovsky, Schlichter, Proshnyan, Vladimirsky, Schmidt, Demyan Bednyi, Tomsky, Karelin, Sklyansky, Podvoisky, Rattel, Muralov, Schtrodakh, Pechle, Berzin.
MOZG SOVETSKOI ROSSII / [THE BRAIN OF SOVIET RUSSIA] (Russia, 1919)
Dir: Dziga Vertov; prod: The Moscow Film Committee [Kinokomitet] of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment [Narkompros]; rel: 1.5.1919; 35 mm, 317m., 14’ (20 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
"The Brain of Soviet Russia constituted the fourth reel of The Anniversary of the Revolution, but it was also shown as a separate film. It introduces the members of the first Soviet government (ten of whom would be shot or assassinated by the one that succeeded it) and their new headquarters, the Moscow Kremlin, where this government moved from St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) in 1918. The Brain of Soviet Russia was released as a separate film on 1 May 1919. Lenin (who here appears on film for the first time after being shot by an assassin) ordered it to be sent abroad, so the world could learn "who was who” in the Kremlin." – YURI TSIVIAN
AA: "Vertov's most bureaucratic film", his business card abroad. Lenin, Bonch-Bruyevich, Trotsky *, Sverdlov, Vatsetitsh, Lunacharsky, Pokrovsky, Chicherin, Karakhan, Steklov, Radek, Sereda, Stuchka, Churyupa, Rykov, Podbelsky, Chlyapnikov, Kamenev, Rakovski, Krasin, Rogov, Zalevski.
PROTSESS MIRONOVA / [IL PROCESSO MIRONOV / THE TRIAL OF MIRONOV] (Russia, 1919)
Dir: Dziga Vertov; prod: The Revolutionary Military Soviet & The Moscow Film Committee [Kinokomitet] of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment [Narkompros]; ph: P. Piotr Ermolov; 35 mm, 287m., 13’ (20 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "The Cossack Colonel Filipp Mironov (1872-1921), whose court-martial Vertov recorded on film in 1919, was a well-known and rather unorthodox civil war figure. These two qualities help to explain why he was tried, and why a film crew was sent to film the trial. Formerly an officer in the Tsar’s army and a hero of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1906 Mironov was demoted to the ranks for his Socialist sympathies and his participation in the Cossack revolutionary movement. His military career looked up again in 1914 (he earned four military decorations during the first three years of World War I), and skyrocketed after 1917, when Mironov was made commander of a cavalry division which fought against the White Army in the south. Mironov’s military successes and his relative tolerance (he was known to spare his prisoners and to have outlawed the death penalty in the territories occupied by his troops) won him popularity among the local Cossack population."
"Apparently Mironov did not think much of Lenin and Trotsky as military strategists, for whenever he disagreed with orders from Moscow he did it his own way. It was in the course of an unsanctioned offensive of this kind that the First Red Cavalry Army surrounded and disarmed Mironov’s cavalry unit in August 1919. Mironov was arrested in the town of Balashov and accused of insubordination. Public speeches, as shown in the film The Trial of Mironov, were part of a campaign aimed at explaining to the population why the Bolshevist government decided to court-martial their legendary hero. The Extraordinary Tribunal sentenced Colonel Mironov to death, but by a special decree of the Central Executive Committee he was pardoned "in view of his great former merits for the Revolution”."
"Vertov’s film ends on this note, but not Mironov’s military career. In January 1920 Mironov joined the Communist Party (which automatically made a person subject to Party discipline), and that October he was put in command of the Second Red Cavalry Army, adding two Red Flag Medals to his four pre-Revolutionary decorations. After the war — in January 1921 — Mironov was arrested again, this time in Moscow, on charges of preparing an anti-Soviet mutiny. This time there was no trial. An escort shot him to death in Butyrsky Prison — by chance, according to the official communiqué. In 1921 Vertov included The Trial of Mironov in his found-footage feature The History of the Civil War." – YURI TSIVIAN (GCM)
AA: Yuri Tsivian in his live commentary summed up that this is a filmed record of the first show trial in Soviet Russia.
LITERATURNO-INSTRUKTORSKII AGITPAROKHOD VTSIK "KRASNAIA ZVEZDA" / [THE RED STAR LITERARY-INSTRUCTIONAL AGIT-STEAMER OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE] (Russia, 1919)
Dir: Dziga Vertov; prod: The Moscow Film Committee [Kinokomitet] of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment [Narkompros]; ph: P. Piotr Ermolov, Aleksandr Lemberg; 35 mm, 335 m., 15’ (20 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "The Red Star Literary-Instructional Agit-Steamer of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee is a political travelogue. Covered with slogans and motley political cartoons, agit-trains and agit-steamers were bandwagons of sorts, sent to spread propaganda in Russia’s faraway towns and villages. Some of them carried a film crew and were equipped with a projector; some had well-known political figures travelling on board. The Red Star, a literary-instructional agit-steamer of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, had both. There were two cameramen on board (P. Ermolov and Aleksandr Lemberg), registering the ship’s progress down the Volga River, and a political celebrity, Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaia, whom we see first on deck, then ashore, talking to local factory workers. The politkom (political commander) of the Red Star agit-steamer happens to be Viatcheslav Molotov, an upcoming celebrity, Stalin’s future minister of foreign affairs."
"The film begins and ends with views of a barge that the Red Star had in tow. It is a kino-barzha, a movie-barge in which films are shown to the locals when the ship is moored. Vertov’s camera pans along the barge’s hull, decorated with a loudly-colored panel, pausing at an emblem illustrating the objective of the literary-instructional agit-steamer — an open book, and next to it the inscription: "Landowners and bourgeoisie kept the people in darkness — the Soviet power opens a road to knowledge". Note that the agit-steamer is equipped with a radio-station, tuned to the Rosta (Russia’s Telegraph Agency) news service." – YURI TSIVIAN (GCM)
AA: Indeed, Molotov and Krupskaya both recorded in this Dziga Vertov film.
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