OT: Nowi Wawilon, USSR (1928)

Director: Grigori Kosinzew, Leonid Trauberg

Music: Dimitri Schostakowitsch

THE NEW BABYLON is a parable of revolutionary fervor and the tyrannical efforts of the bourgeoisie to suppress it. Trauberg and Kosinzew used the tools of cinema in a lively and invigorating fashion that is still asthonishing. Multiple storylines and locations are cut between with brisk fluidity; the camera is tossed, spun, raised lowered, and put in places you would never expect. The performances of the cast are quite eccentric, yet never out of place or out of keeping with the tone of the picture. The film has all of the vigor and pure cinematic originality of Abel Gance's Napoleon without all the pretensions to greatness shouldered by that film.

 

THE STORY: In an unashamedly socialist look at the aftermaths of the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune of 1861 on the working class of France, the film lures the viewer in with the sympathetic tale of a shop girl who falls for a soldier shortly before he goes off to war. Once the French army is defeated and the Commune is formed (the film assumes a certain level of familiarity with these events), the shop girl (now a proud member of the Commune) and the soldier end up fighting, unbeknownst to each other, on opposite sides of the siege of Paris. (Matt Bailey)

INSTRUMENTATION: 1.1.1.1 – 2.1.1.0 - Schlzg mit Pk (3 Spieler).Klav - Streicher (mind. 8.7.5.4.3)

number of musicians: 39

 

This project was made possible bythe cooperation of ZDF/ARTE.

This is a production by the EUROPEAN FILMPHILHARMONIC INSTITUTE.

contact: Beate Warkentien

Phone +49 (0) 30 27890-194

e-mail: warkentien@filmphilharmonie.de