Society and Culture: International Festival of Archival Films opens in Moscow

From November 16-30, 2022, the II International Festival of Archival Films is held in Moscow. Its program will be presented on several platforms – at the Illusion movie theatre, the cinema hall of the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pioneer movie theatre and the Film Museum.

The program of the festival includes forgotten and underappreciated by the contemporaries films, little-known scientific films and spectacular motion pictures. A special attention in the program is paid to the screenings of archival findings – films that have long been considered lost.

In addition to the main program Restoration and Findings, original cycles, collected by the leading art experts of the Russian Gosfilmofond and famous film historians, will be presented within the framework of the festival. Thus, cycle of the film critic and historian of cinema Naum Kleiman The third out of three. Problematic films, problematic era will showcase films that were considered unsuccessful or erroneous: works by Sergei Eisenstein, Grigori Aleksandrov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Boris Barnet and other directors. The original program by Evgeny Margolit White clothes. Doctors on screen will reveal the multidimensional image of the medical profession through the films of the past century.

The program Dreams of the West: Orientalism in Cinema is dedicated to the influence of East Africa on filmmakers: for many decades, many adventure films were shot there.

The program Film Expeditions: Journey across Continents will also be devoted to the topic of travel. It will include travelogue films in which the movie camera not only captures the path of explorers, but also acts as a full-fledged actor. With its help, the directors study the nature, culture and customs of the inhabitants of various territories – from hot Africa to impassable taiga.

This year, the section Cinema-Capital will tell about the capital of Armenia – Yerevan. And the program Cinema of Central Asia, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the USSR, will be dedicated to a bright stage in the development of innovative cinematography of the Central Asian republics in the 1960s – 1980s.

The research topic will be covered by the program Post-war Popular Science: The Space of Aesthetic Freedom, within which Vladimir Kobrin's experimental work Self-organization of biological systems will be presented.

More information about the Moscow International Festival of Archival Films is available on the official website.