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THE MOSCOW TIMES
16.12.2005
REVOLUTIONARY DESIGNS
Brian
DROITCOUR
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The Cinema Museum
opens up its collection of avant-garde film posters.
Just
weeks after the Cinema Museum shut down, the Moscow Museum of
Modern Art will show pieces from the cinematheque's
collection of memorabilia. An exhibition opening Tuesday, «The Soviet Film
Poster. 1920s to 1930s,» explores the collaboration
between avant-garde cinema and design.
Posters
by influential artists such as Alexander Rodchenko
will be accompanied by screenings of the films they advertised, including
works by Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga
Vertov.
«Poster
designers used the expressive techniques that Eisenstein and Vertov employed in their films,»
Nina Baburina, a historian specializing in posters,
said in a Thursday interview. «Angles, cuts and close-ups were all used.»
Film
poster designers had fewer ideological constraints than those working in
propaganda. As two leading artists, the Stenberg brothers, wrote in 1928: «We
do not have to observe the proportions both between objects and their
individual details ... in short, we do anything to stop the hurried passerby.»
The
Sternbergs designed posters for Eisenstein's «October»
and «Man With a Movie Camera» by Vertov. «They were
friends with the directors,» Baburina
said. «They witnessed their experiments.»
Although
the state film production and advertising agency, Sovkino,
officially controlled poster design, Eisenstein had a say in how his films
were advertised. «Designers would submit 10 sketches, and Eisenstein would
look them over before sending them to be printed,» Baburina said.
After
Socialist Realism was introduced as the official aesthetic in 1934, elements
of that style began to creep into poster design. Technological advances made
the collage techniques common in the 1920s obsolete.
«The
introduction of sound also influenced the aesthetic of the film poster,» Baburina said. «It required
more prolonged images, and elements of that appeared in film posters. They
started to show more landscapes.»
This
is the Cinema Museum's first exhibition on other premises. The
directors intend to show more of its collection, but have no definite plans
yet. «Right now, we're busy packing and moving,»
assistant director Irina Lander said Thursday. «We
don't have time to think about anything else.»
«The
Soviet Film Poster. 1920s to 1930s» runs Tues. to Jan. 9 at the Moscow Museum
of Modern Art, located at 17 Yermolayevsky Pereulok. Metro Mayakovskaya.
Tel. 231-4405/08.
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