• The Story of a Comission: How Esfir Shub and Dziga Vertov Worked on a Film for the Tenth Anniversary of the Revolution

УДК: 791.229.2+791.44.071.1

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2023-3-158-172

EDN: KMOXFT

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Kirill L. Goryachok

Cand. Sc. in Philosophy, Researcher
The State Institute for Art Studies
Moscow, Russia
E-mail: goryachokk@mail.ru

The Story of a Comission: How Esfir Shub and Dziga Vertov Worked on a Film for the Tenth Anniversary of the Revolution

Abstract

In September 1926, the Agitprop of the Central Committee commissioned a commemorative documentary film from the Moscow studio Sovkino to mark the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The film, under the working title Ten Years, was entrusted to the main documentary filmmaker of the era, Dziga Vertov. However, the chairman of the studio’s board, Ilya Trainin, opposed him as a candidate and put forward his own, a young filmmaker Esfir Shub. The bureaucrat removed Vertov from working on the commissioned film because he was sure that the director would not be able to make the film ideologically correct. Internal intrigues lead to Trainin barring Vertov’s access to the Sovkino film library and later seeking the director’s dismissal from the studio. The story of the film Ten Years demonstrates the changes in the perception of documentary films on the part of the party and the leadership. The article uses previously unpublished archival documents that shed light on the beginning of Esfir Shub’s work as a director, as well as on the details of Dziga Vertov’s dismissal from Sovkino.

Keywords

History of cinema, documentary cinema, Dziga Vertov, Esfir Shub.

For citation

Goryachok K.L. The Story of a Comission: How Esfir Shub and Dziga Vertov Worked on a Film for the Tenth Anniversary of the Revolution. Theatre. Fine Arts. Cinema. Music. 2023, no. 3, pp. 158–172.

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2023-3-158-172

EDN KMOXFT

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Received: 15.06.2023

Revised: 05.08.2023

Accepted: 12.08.2023