The Moving Image Source Calendar is a selective international guide to retrospectives, screenings, festivals, and exhibitions.
Descriptions are drawn from the calendars of the presenting venues.
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Retrospective 2012: The Red Dream Factory
February 9–19, 2012 at
Berlinale
, Berlin
The Retrospective of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival has rediscovered a legendary German-Russian film studio: Mezhrabpom-Film and its German branch Prometheus wrote film history from 1922 to 1936.
Moisei Aleinikov, a Russian film expert and producer from tsarist times who had a great instinct for the right topics, and Willi Münzenberg, a German communist and "red media entrepreneur," joined forces in 1922 to combine clever business ideas, a political mission and boundless enthusiasm for new cinematic narratives. And so the film studio Mezhrabpom-Rus (later called Mezhrabpom-Film), a unique German-Russian film venture, was set up in Moscow, with headquarters in Berlin.
After producing some 600 films, this international experiment was brutally ended eleven and fourteen years later by Hitler's and Stalin's regimes.
Featured Works:
Entitled "The Red Dream Factory", the Retrospective of the 2012 Berlinale will be dedicated to this studio rediscovered in Russian archives.
The Retrospective will present some 30 programs made up of over 40 silent and sound films. The silent films will all be accompanied by live music performed by renowned artists. The program includes diverse German premieres of films that are being made available by Gosfilmofond (Moscow) and the Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk.
The film program will be accompanied by discussions and events at the Deutsche Kinemathek. Berlin's Bertz + Fischer will also be publishing a book for the Retrospective. In it, German and Russian authors will illuminate the development of the studio and the aesthetics of the films that were produced there.
In cooperation with Arte/ZDF, the Berlinale presents Sergei Eisenstein's classic Oktjabr (October, 1928). The film about the revolution in October of 1917 has written film history, particularly due to its crowd scenes. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra will accompany the screening on February 10th, 2012, at the Friedrichstadt-Palast with the original, reconstructed soundtrack by composer Edmund Meisel.
Program information:
