“The dark faith” by G.Boltyansky – a 1917 fiction film script, directed by V. Starevich

As part of the article, for the first time, the script of the fiction film “The Dark Faith” is published. It was written in 1916 by screenwriter Grigory Moiseevich Boltyansky – the future organizer of Soviet film production, a pioneer of Soviet newsreels, a film enthusiast.. After the October Revolution he was busy in directing, film studies, film history and theory, as well as other areas related to the popularization of the art of cinema. The period of 1916–1918 is the time of his active collaboration with the cinema department of the Skobelev Committe. One of the fulltime members there was the director and cameraman, the founder of Russian animation, and the master of special effects Vladislav Aleksandrovich Starevich (Ladislas Starevich). The four-part fiction film “The Dark Faith” was released in the second half of 1917. It is one of only two examples of collaboration between very different filmmakers. The main source of materials for the publication was the collection of Grigory Boltyansky, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI, Moscow), as well as materials related to the history of the cinema department of the Skobelev Committee from the collections of the Central State Archive of Literature and Art (TsGALI, St. Petersburg). The publication allows a deeper understanding of the creative evolution of both Boltyansky and Starevich, whose paths, after the completion of their collaboration with the Skobelev Committee, never crossed again.