Novyy Vavilon

Programme: Bordwell / Thompson : Carte Blanche Directed by Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg (USSR 1929) With David Gutman, Yelena Kuzmina, Andrei Kostrichkin 102 min / B&W / Subtitles: FR - NL ⁄ PIANO During the 1920s in Soviet Russia, Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg were the leading members of the FEKS (“Factory of the Eccentric Actor”) filmmaking group. As the name suggests, the practitioners aimed not at realism, but at the grotesque, the comic, and the appeal of popular rather than high art. New Babylon deals with the Paris Commune of 1871, a brief period when workers took over the French government. It was seen as a forerunner of the Soviet Revolution. The title refers to a giant Parisian department store, which also seems to be in the business of putting on patriotic operettas about the current war with Germany. The store’s owner and patrons, as well as the performers in the operettas represent the bourgeoisie, while the workers who staff the store eventually rebel and join the doomed revolutionary government. The lengthy opening section of wild reveling in the store is the best example of the eccentricity that distinguished their films. – Kristin Thompson Theatre: Plateau