The Films of Aleksandr Medvedkin and Chris Marker, The Film Studies Center, University of Chicago, October 12, October 19, November 2, 2011

In connection with the exhibition Vision and Communism at the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, the films of Aleksandr Medvedkin and Chris Marker were shown at the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago. Both the exhibition and the films are a part of the Soviet Arts Experience, an extensive series of 100 programs and events devoted to Soviet art and culture in twenty-six venues across Chicago. The massive nature of this experience demands attention to how Soviet art is perceived today. Although it is beyond the range of this discussion to offer a wholesale overview of Soviet or Communist art, this essay will focus on the relevance of Medvedkin and Marker as representatives of active, political filmmaking.

On November 10 and 11, 2011, Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, a program in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, hosted a symposium to honor the wide-ranging work of Ukrainian filmmaker Ihor (Igor') Savchenko (1906-1950). Savchenko’s career in cinema spanned several decades and encompassed an assortment of genres; his many credits include the first Soviet musical The Accordion (1934), the romantic comedy Chance Meeting (1936), and the wartime epics Bogdan Khmelnitskii (1941), The Russian Sailor: Ivan Nikulin (1944), and The Third Strike (1948). The Symposium consisted of screenings, discussions, and papers presented by leading international film-specialists that not only illuminated details of Savchenko’s biography and the conditions in which his film-works were made, but also took steps toward situating his extremely varied oeuvre within the broader context of (film-) history.

The following interviews with Emma Widdis and filmmaker Volodymir Tykhyi shed light on the origins of the first international symposium dedicated to the work of Savchenko and its key lines of inquiry and on Tykhyi’s own work.

The structure of The Shout (1978) by Jerzy Skolimowski is built on the antagonism between two male protagonists, Anthony Fielding (Ian Hurt) and Crossley (Alan Bates). The first is a composer who records and experiments with natural sounds; the latter is a mysterious invader who claims to possess supernatural powers and is able to kill with his shout. The classically trained musician embodies human culture and order, while the other character denotes rough animalistic forces and natural elements. This contrast between the two characters is accentuated by other elements in the film that represent the norm and the irregularity, such as the cricket match played between the “sane” and the “insane” teams, or the “normal” and “abnormal” tree that grow nearby the mental asylum.

The following video series documents the panel Revolution, Transformation and Identity: Central European Artists Reflect upon Post-Communist Art, Urbanism, and Culture that took place on October 30, 2011, at the Graham Foundation, Chicago. The panel was held in conjunction with the exhibition Voices from the Center on view at threewalls gallery, Chicago, October 28-December 10, 2011. The series includes introductory remarks by Shannon Stratton, Executive and Creative Director of threewalls and Janeil Engelstad, curator of the exhibition, and individual presentations by artists Matej Vakula, Miklos Suranyi, Oto Hudec, Magda Stanova, and Jan Worpus of Grafixipol.