![]() ![]() He then cut to an image of a bowl of soup, and then back to the shot of Ivan. What he discovered is now known as the Kuleshov Effect, and it came to light like this: Kuleshov took a shot of a well-known Russian matinee idol named Ivan Mosjoukine staring off-camera with no expression. And his most famous discovery bears his name and provided his students with the cornerstone of a new cinematic philosophy. ![]() The most well-known and influential teacher at this new school was the filmmaker Lev Kuleshov. It was called VGIK, or the State Institute of Cinematography. To encourage this experimentation, the government founded the world’s first film school in 1919. In what order, and why? Then they began experimenting – rearranging the order of the shots, shortening some, repeating others – all to see what the effects might be. How was the image composed? How did they do the thing? And most importantly, how were the shots edited together? How long were the shots? What was the camera angle? They took the actual reels of film, cut them apart, and analyzed them. That’s what you’re doing right now! And they didn’t just watch them they dissected them. So, some enterprising Russian filmmakers took a different approach. The revolutionary government choked off imports, and Russia didn’t have the capacity to manufacture much of its own stock. You're gonna need film stock if you're gonna make films. Second, and more importantly, there was virtually no raw film stock in the country. They took over the studios, combining them to form one state-owned company called Narkompros, also known as The People’s Commissariat for Education. In 1918, the new Bolshevik government did what Germany had done in creating UFA – which we talked about last time. ![]() Prior to the revolution, there were a lot of production companies, mostly making pro-Tsarist films. First, it needed to centralize the Russian film industry. But before it could get that engine started, the party had a few obstacles to overcome. So the government took a strong interest in film, because it recognized cinema for what it was – a powerful tool for social and political influence. Because the resulting government, ruled by what would become the Communist Party, was organized around principles of workers’ rights, state control of industry, and the suppression of dissent. “Bolshevik” means “majority” in Russian, by the way, and this political movement grew from the peasant and working classes who acquired their power through persuasion and force. In 1917, the second of two violent revolts in Russia, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Tsar and brought the Bolsheviks to power. And we’ll watch the rise of a cohesive, self-conscious, and game-changing film movement that would unlock the power of the cut to create meaning, shape public opinion, and call a hungry populace to action. We’ll see the founding of the world’s first film school. Today, we’ll meet a bunch of filmmakers who spent as much time studying films as they did making them. The Russian Revolution marked the first major civil war fought in the age of cinema.Īnd the big winners in that struggle understood the unique ability of film to change minds and inflame hearts. Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet? The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: 1966 - Dir. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 2009 - Dir. Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: īattleship Potempkin: 1925 - Dir. In this episode of Crash Course Film History, Craig talks us through some of the filmic things going on in post-revolution era Russia. Russian filmmakers started trying to understand the power of the cut itself, thus developing a theory of filmmaking based solely around the juxtaposition of images: Soviet Montage. Even though film stock was hard to come by, we saw the first film school started, and the study of film became hugely important. Russia went and had a revolution in 1917 and cinema was a big part of its aftermath.
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