Special Event
Dovzhenko's "film poem" style brings to life the collective experience of life for the Ukrainian workers, examining natural cycles through his epic montage. He explores life, death, violence, sex, and other issues as they relate to the collective farms.
This is Dovzhenko’s most accessible film but, perhaps for these same reasons, most misunderstood. An idealistic vision of the possibilities of Communism made just before Stalinism set in and the Kulack class was liquidated, ‘Earth’ was viewed negatively by many Soviets because of its exploration of death and other dark issues that come with revolution.
In 1958 a Brussels’ film jury would vote ‘Earth’ as one of the great films of all time. It marks a threshold in Dovzhenko’s career emblematic of a turning point in the Ukrainian cultural and political avant-garde - the end of one period and transition to another.
USSR 1930 Aleksandr Dovzhenko 75m
This classic silent movie will be presented with live piano accompaniment by the brilliant virtuosic Stephen Horne.