in Syria
August 18, 2019
August 9, 2019
Shub, Dreyer
KINO SLANG
at the
at the
Echo Park Film Center
Friday
August 16th, 2019
Doors at 7:30pm
$5 Suggested Donation
Echo Park Film Center
1200 North Alvarado St.
Los Angeles, CA. 90026
presents
followed by
TVÅ MÄNNISKOR
____
presents
К.Ш.Э.
Комсомол - шеф электрификации
Эсфирь Шуб
Эсфирь Шуб
____
K.Sh.E.
K.Sh.E.
Komsomol, Leader of Electrifiction
followed by
TVÅ MÄNNISKOR
____
TWO PEOPLE
Carl Th. Dreyer, Sweden, 1945
Carl Th. Dreyer, Sweden, 1945
*
K.Sh.E.
KOMSOMOL, LEADER OF ELECTRIFICATION
К.Ш.Э. Комсомол - шеф электрификации
1932. U.S.S.R. 56 minutes.
Author of the Work: Esfir Shub (АВТОР РАБОТЬІ: Эсфирь ШУБ). Production: Communist Youth League, Rosfilm/Suyuzkino (Moscow). Montage (Sound and Image): Esfir Shub. Assitant Director: L. Felonov. Camera: V. Solodovnikov. Assitant: Nato Vachnadze. Sound recorded on the Shorin system (Aleksandr Shorin). Sound Assistant: M. Nikolayevskaja. Music: Gavriil Popov. Collaboration: Marietta Shaginyan, author of "Hydrocentral: The Hydro-Electric Power Station". With: Komsomol Members, Baltic Red Star Sailors, comrade Savelyey, comrade Klimov, comrade Zapredeloy, comrade Manyukov, comrade Vinter, comrade Mitrusenko, comrade Dudnik, comrade Vachnadze, colonel Gubor, Academician A.A. Chernychev, Konstantin Kovalsky (theremin) Paramonova (Komsomol,"How to Make Light Bulbs"). Songs: "Kominternlied" (composed by Hanns Eisler, 1929, lyrics by Franz Jahnke 1926 / Maxim Vallentin; Russian lyrics by Ilya Frenckel); "L'Internationale" (composed by Pierre De Geyter, 1888, lyrics by Eugene Pottier, 1871; sung in Russian).
"As our epoch is very interesting, we must select from it for the future." (Esfir Shub)
"I will learn to speak in the voice of the class for which and together with whom I want to keep working." (Esfir Shub)
A "sound film and radio screen" representing Soviet electrification and electricity, and the building of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station in Ukraine as part of the first Five Year Plan (1928-1932).
Along with Vertov's Enthusiasm and Dovzhenko's Ivan, Esfir Shub's K.Sh.E. Komsomol, Leader of Electrification is one of the earliest and most adventurous of Soviet sound films, and is about the production and function of sound itself, its producers and organizers. Unlike any other film it depicts the many possibilities of using sound through the theme of electrification. In this optical-acoustical experiment we 'see' sound and electricity as never before, raw and in the service of the people who produce it, and its amplification.
Pioneer Soviet woman filmmaker Esfir Shub--originator of the compilation film using existing newsreel and actuality material, and consequently one of the first film preservationists, most well known in the West for her film The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927)--here films the movement of electricity from product to production then source: first we see electricity in use, what it can record, communicate, hear and see, in a sequence that "emphasizes the materiality of the cinematic equipment itself" (Ricardo Matos Cabo) while recording sound at the Moscow Sound Factory and on Leningrad square: theremin, orchestra, internationalist radio production and broadcast, red flag parade. She then films a production line of electric objects inside an advanced light bulb factory, scored by the music of Shostakovich pupil Gavriil Popov ("a sight-sound victory!" Eisenstein called this sequence), where we see only women workers and hear their proud testimony. Finally we see and hear--turbines, blast furnaces, Armenian workers, Baltic Red Star Sailors, accordions, water--the massive effort to construct and dedicate the actual hydroelectric dam that will generate all this energy.
The cinefication and electrification of life uniquely produced in this era, and in this society, is expressed, writes Ricardo Matos Cabo, through Shub's "unity of sound and image (which) comes to signify the actual unity of people and languages."
*
TWO PEOPLE
TVÅ MÄNNISKOR
1944. Sweden. 71 minutes
Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer. Production: Svensk Filmindustri, Stockholm. Producer: Carl Anders Dymling. Script: Carl Th. Dreyer and Martin Glanner, based on W.O. Somin's play Attentat. Cinematography: Gunnar Fischer. Sound: Lennart Svensson, Tore Ljungberg. Art Direction: Nils Svenwall. Music: Lars-Erik Larsson. Editing: Carl Th. Dreyer and Edvin Hammarberg. Shot July 5-August 23, 1944. Players: Georg Rydeberg (Arne Lundell), Wanda Rothgarth (Marianne), Gabriel Alw (Professor Sander), Stig Olin.
A tragedy that takes place entirely in the middle-class apartment of hospital staff doctor and scientist Arne Lundell, and his wife Marianne. Accusations of plagiarism are leveled at Lundell over his thesis on a treatment for schizophrenia. In no position to refute these accusations made by a superior at the hospital, Lundell is only consoled by the love of his wife, and his love for her, until that too is implicated in the scandal.
"In theory, the film is the ne plus ultra of Dreyer's style: only two characters, one set, and a plot whose duration coincides exactly with the running time," writes critic Tom Milne before judging that in practice this results in a film "devoid of any sort of resonance." This was the consensus view of Two People, a view that identified more with the director's rejection of the film than the film itself and its time.
The actors, the two people of Two People--Georg Rydeberg and Wanda Rothgarth--were imposed upon Dreyer during casting by the producers at Svensk Filmindustri (Carl Anders Dymling and Victor Sjöström). Because of this Dreyer disowned the film, declaring it impossible to fulfill the story with the wrong faces. Dreyer also virulently objected to the producers' imposition of sentimental exit music after the siren sounds, the death heralds, of the ending shot.
Yet it's clear from the plastic tensions in the film (and the production stills) that Dreyer nevertheless applied himself fully in this compromised situation to the initial idea and challenge of shooting a film worthy of the name with only two figures, three walls, and the objects placed there as they break-apart and unite with the camera, light, time, and sound. Two People's dense, multifarious image-dialogue relations in this small space are consistently startling and unnameable; one could say they evince the beginnings of an other cinema, afflicted and confined, later elaborated by Marguerite Duras's Nathalie Granger and La Camion, Godard's Numéro deux, Warhol's Eat and Beauty #2, Shirley Clarke's The Connection and Portrait of Jason, all Stephen Dwoskin's films, Philippe Garrel's La Concentration and Les Hautes solitudes, and Pedro Costa's In Vanda's Room and Where Lies Your Hidden Smile?. Nearly everything about Two People, whether tonally off or on, humanly present or absent, would serve Dreyer's later masterpieces Ordet and Gertrud.
"The 'otherworldliness' that some viewers associate with Dreyer's films is, for the most part, a fusion of his deeply accurate observations of human action and interaction presented through authentically cinematic techniques, refined by the director over many years, which heighten the sense of presence of whatever state of being Dreyer attempts to communicate and evoke. It is by discarding 'otherworldly' pretensions that Dreyer arrives at this and that his characters achieve their 'grace'--a process made explicit in Ordet, which is Dreyer's fable on this very point." (Donald Skoller, Dreyer in Double Reflection).
Dreyer agreed to make this film in Sweden as it was a means to flee Nazi-occupied Denmark with a job title, clearing his passport and ensuring he wouldn't be interned in a refugee camp while there. If his detachment on the film lead to a kind of abstraction, he persisted through his craft in showing the extent of the void within many populations at the time.
*
Program total running time: 2 hours and 11 minutes
There will be no introductions.
Doors open at 7:30pm, film at 8pm.
$5 Suggested Donation.
Special Thanks to Ricardo Matos Cabo and his work (without whom this screening would not be possible), Natalie Ryabchikova, Lilya Kaganovsky, and Chloe Reyes.
The two actors Dreyer wished to use...
*
Esfir Shub
Carl Th. Dreyer
“Kino Slang Presents” is a series of cinema screenings programmed by Andy Rector at the EPFC. It continues the cinematographic and historical excavations, proceedings by montage and association, silent alarms and naked dawns of this thirteen-year-old blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Archive
- October 2005 (1)
- November 2005 (6)
- December 2005 (6)
- January 2006 (1)
- February 2006 (9)
- March 2006 (2)
- April 2006 (3)
- May 2006 (2)
- June 2006 (3)
- July 2006 (14)
- August 2006 (11)
- September 2006 (5)
- October 2006 (9)
- November 2006 (3)
- December 2006 (5)
- January 2007 (6)
- February 2007 (7)
- March 2007 (6)
- April 2007 (3)
- May 2007 (1)
- June 2007 (7)
- July 2007 (2)
- August 2007 (3)
- October 2007 (4)
- November 2007 (5)
- December 2007 (3)
- January 2008 (2)
- February 2008 (2)
- March 2008 (4)
- May 2008 (3)
- June 2008 (2)
- July 2008 (3)
- August 2008 (3)
- September 2008 (4)
- October 2008 (3)
- November 2008 (1)
- December 2008 (3)
- January 2009 (3)
- March 2009 (5)
- April 2009 (3)
- May 2009 (11)
- June 2009 (6)
- July 2009 (2)
- August 2009 (6)
- September 2009 (2)
- December 2009 (1)
- January 2010 (2)
- February 2010 (1)
- March 2010 (2)
- April 2010 (10)
- May 2010 (4)
- June 2010 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- August 2010 (1)
- September 2010 (2)
- October 2010 (1)
- November 2010 (4)
- December 2010 (3)
- January 2011 (2)
- February 2011 (5)
- March 2011 (6)
- April 2011 (3)
- May 2011 (3)
- June 2011 (5)
- July 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (1)
- October 2011 (3)
- November 2011 (3)
- December 2011 (1)
- January 2012 (2)
- February 2012 (7)
- March 2012 (10)
- April 2012 (7)
- May 2012 (11)
- June 2012 (3)
- July 2012 (3)
- August 2012 (2)
- September 2012 (1)
- October 2012 (9)
- November 2012 (10)
- December 2012 (6)
- January 2013 (3)
- February 2013 (4)
- March 2013 (4)
- April 2013 (4)
- May 2013 (3)
- June 2013 (4)
- July 2013 (4)
- August 2013 (2)
- September 2013 (7)
- October 2013 (6)
- November 2013 (2)
- December 2013 (4)
- January 2014 (4)
- February 2014 (6)
- March 2014 (7)
- April 2014 (5)
- May 2014 (4)
- June 2014 (6)
- July 2014 (2)
- August 2014 (5)
- September 2014 (1)
- October 2014 (1)
- January 2015 (1)
- April 2015 (1)
- July 2015 (1)
- September 2015 (2)
- October 2015 (1)
- December 2015 (1)
- January 2016 (1)
- February 2016 (2)
- March 2016 (1)
- April 2016 (1)
- May 2016 (2)
- June 2016 (1)
- July 2016 (3)
- August 2016 (1)
- September 2016 (2)
- October 2016 (2)
- December 2016 (3)
- January 2017 (1)
- February 2017 (2)
- May 2017 (3)
- July 2017 (3)
- October 2017 (3)
- November 2017 (1)
- December 2017 (1)
- January 2018 (2)
- February 2018 (2)
- March 2018 (4)
- April 2018 (1)
- May 2018 (3)
- July 2018 (1)
- August 2018 (1)
- January 2019 (1)
- March 2019 (3)
- May 2019 (3)
- July 2019 (1)
- August 2019 (2)
- September 2019 (2)
- October 2019 (1)
- November 2019 (2)
- December 2019 (1)
- January 2020 (3)
- February 2020 (2)
- April 2020 (4)
- May 2020 (1)
- October 2020 (1)
- December 2020 (1)
- March 2021 (1)
- April 2021 (1)
- May 2021 (1)
- October 2021 (1)
- January 2022 (2)
- March 2022 (1)
- April 2022 (2)
- May 2022 (3)
- May 2023 (1)
- October 2023 (3)
- January 2024 (1)
- May 2024 (1)
- September 2024 (1)