What the storming of the Winter Palace looked like in 1917was discussed at the Presidential Library Cinema Club

October 26, 2017 in the Presidential Library Cinema Club the opening of a new cycle of meetings "History looks at us" was held. The theme of the first meeting, timed to the centennial of the Revolution of 1917 in Russia, was a movie review "If there was an assault on the Winter palace?". Participants of the meeting, students of Saint-Petersburg universities, not only looked at the different versions of the key event of 1917, shot by the masters of the national cinema, but also discussed them with experts.  

The host of the cycle, Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of TV and Radio Journalism of the St. Petersburg State University Sergei Ilchenko, opening the meeting of the cinema club, emphasized: "Cinematography is a reflection of history and its interpreter; it is a special kind of visual culture that offers its own versions of what was happening or could happen in our lives in the past, present and future".

An animated discussion was unfolded around the first fragment - an episode from Sergei Eisenstein's "October" film of 1927. The frames of the picture, taken with great artistic certainty, can now be perceived as documentary, but this is erroneous. "In fact, we are dealing with the genius creation of a brilliant artist", said Roman Sokolov, doctor of historical sciences, professor of St. Petersburg State University, who was invited by the expert. "There are really pictures in the picture that claim to be perceived as actually existing in this context of events. The film is based on documentary evidence, in many ways on eyewitness recollections, but storming the Winter Palace in reality did not look that way".

Also, the participants of the meeting looked at and discussed fragments from Mikhail Romm's film "Lenin in October", filmed in 1937, and the picture "I saw the birth of a new world" by Sergei Bondarchuk.

The plot of Mikhail Romm's painting "Lenin in October" describes the revolutionary Petrograd of 1917 and shows Lenin's role in organizing the Bolshevik insurrection. The film reflects all the important events: the preparation of an uprising in the factories and plants of Petrograd, the legendary shot of the Aurora, the storming of the Winter Palace.

Another attempt to transfer to the screen of the event in 1917 was the second film of the film "Red Bells" by Sergei Bondarchuk, shot according to John Reed's book "Ten Days That Shook the World". The picture also recreates revolutionary events in Russia, but covers a larger period: from April 3 to October 26, 1917.