About the event
No question that the revolutionary Soviet cinema of the 1920s had a galvanising impact on audiences and filmmakers around the world. That impact would continue far beyond the silent period, with Sergei Eisenstein’s work a continuing inspiration to radical filmmakers and artists.
But what about the others who made up that avant-garde, like the FEKS group, which Eisenstein nearly joined in 1924, led by Ukrainians Leonid Trauberg and Grigori Kozintsev? Or Sergei Yutkevich, designer of such films as Bed and Sofa and later responsible for rescuing fragments of Eisenstein’s banned Bezhin Meadow and saving Sergei Parajanov’s Colour of Pomegranates from oblivion?
Ian Christie learned about Soviet cinema’s past and present during the 1980s. His new book, The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema (2026), chronicles those discoveries, reaching back to Russia’s pre-revolutionary cinema, and forward to the uncertain present.
He has also made a film about what he learned from Leonid Trauberg, a survivor of Stalin’s savage repression. This seminar will follow a screening of that film, Voices from the Chorus (Ian Christie & Roland Denning).
About the film
In 1941, Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg were feted with first-class Stalin Prizes for their hugely popular Maxim trilogy. Eight years later, Trauberg was denounced as a “bourgeois cosmopolitan who had brought nothing but harm to Soviet cinema” and kicked out of the Leningrad studio he had helped create.
This film is the story of how he rose from the Jewish ghetto of Odesa to launch the Factory of the Eccentric Actor in revolutionary Petrograd with fellow-Ukrainian Kozintsev, how he and Sergei Eisenstein shared their love of cliff-hanger serials and detective stories, and how they both survived Stalin’s terror.
Ian Christie got to know Trauberg in the 1980s, and was able to film him on a visit to London. Only later did he learn what Trauberg had suffered and how he had rebuilt his life and career after the trauma of 1949.
Russia and its artists have suffered many dark times, but its culture belongs to the world, whoever occupies the Kremlin. Our title echoes Alexandr Blok’s poem, ‘A Voice from the Chorus’, evoked by Trauberg in his final memoir: “Be happy with your life… if only you knew the cold and darkness of the days to come”.
About the speaker
Known for his books on Scorsese, Powell and Pressburger, and early Soviet cinema, Ian Christie is now Emeritus Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy and Visiting Tutor at the National Film and Television School. He was Gresham College’s first professor in the history of film and media between 2017-21. He was vice-president and later president of Europa Cinemas, an engagement that began while he was head of regional programming and distribution at the British Film Institute, 1976-93.
How to attend
This event is open to all, and free to attend. You can reserve your spot on Eventbrite.
