GoEast Festival Symposium Reexamines Lenfilm Studio's Legacy Amid 2012 Soviet Studio Revivals
In April 2012, Wiesbaden hosted the 12th GoEast: Festival of Central and East European Film, which featured a symposium called RealAvantGarde – With Lenfilm Through the Short 20th Century, curated by Barbara Wurm and Olaf Müller. This event highlighted overlooked elements of Lenfilm, established in 1918, while steering clear of its famous productions. It included morning lectures and screenings that attracted considerable attention. Although Lenfilm has significantly influenced the avant-garde of the 1920s and the experimentation during Perestroika, it now faces severe financial challenges and the threat of closure. Director Aleksandr Sokurov's attempts at modernization have not yielded success. The symposium also aligned with a renewed interest in Soviet cinema, marked by a Mezhrabpom-Film retrospective at the 62nd Berlinale and a VUFKU tribute at Kinofest NYC.
Key facts
- The 12th GoEast Festival was held in Wiesbaden in April 2012.
- The symposium RealAvantGarde focused on Lenfilm studio's lesser-known works.
- Curators Barbara Wurm and Olaf Müller avoided screening famous FEKS films or Chapaev.
- Lenfilm was founded in 1918 and influenced Soviet film across the 20th century.
- The studio is in debt and faces closure, with valuable land in central St. Petersburg.
- Aleksandr Sokurov proposed modernizing Lenfilm but was unsuccessful.
- 2012 saw multiple retrospectives of Soviet studios, including Mezhrabpom-Film at Berlinale and VUFKU at Kinofest NYC.
- Symposium presentations covered Shostakovich's film music, Evgenii Cherviakov's rediscovered films, and Fridrikh Ermler's contributions.
Entities
Artists
- John Riley
- Jeremy Hicks
- Natascha Drubek
- Barbara Wurm
- Olaf Müller
- Ivan Chuviliaev
- Oleksandr Dovzhenko
- Dziga Vertov
- Moisei Aleinikov
- Willi Münzenberg
- Günter Agde
- Alexander Schwarz
- Tat'iana Vol'tskaia
- Gaby Babic
- Olaf Möller
- Dmitrii Shostakovich
- Grigorii Kozintsev
- Leonid Trauberg
- Mikhail Tsekhanovsky
- Petr Bagrov
- Evgenii Cherviakov
- Sergei Kapterev
- Fridrikh Ermler
- Aleksandr Sokurov
Institutions
- GoEast: Festival of Central and East European Film
- Lenfilm
- openspace.ru
- Mezhrabpom-Film
- Berlinale
- Kinofest NYC
- VUFKU
- Prometheus
- Bertz + Fischer
- MOMA
- State University of Film and Television St. Petersburg
- Film Research Scientific Institute
- State Institute of Cinematography
- ARTMargins Online
Locations
- Wiesbaden
- Germany
- St. Petersburg
- Russia
- New York
- United States
- Berlin
- Moscow