We decided to celebrate the gallery’s birthday by going to the cinema. When our whole crowd entered the cinema, we, like, into a rabbit hole, fell into the abyss of memory of several generations who have lived in our country for decades. Realising that the vast needed to be somehow embraced and mastered, we decided to start by studying the films that were created in the Russian cinema in the period from the 1910s. Well, the task has appeared before us!..

Cinema almost immediately – since the time of the Lumière brothers – separated from the “parent” type of creativity – photography. “Moving pictures” have become a powerful part of the cultural life of society. The main function of cinema is to form worlds and meanings within the film audience, taken directly from life or fictional – authentic and not so much.

Contemporary art, in turn, has adapted the format of the cinema we are used to for its own purposes, already working not only with the very basis – the method – but also expanding and supplementing it with a formal side, changing functions, as well as deconstructing and reassembling in the most daring types of installations, objects and other things. In addition, we should not forget that the magic of cinema has greatly influenced traditional media – painting and graphics – and some famous artists have worked and are working not only in the space of “pure” art but also as members of the cinematic community, as part of film crews. The history of cinema that was shot on the territory of the former USSR is extensive; it is like the Atlantis that went under the ice, and no matter how much we study this layer of culture, it is extremely difficult to fully cover everything. There are masterpieces among all kinds of ceiling paintings, but few people remember them these days. The topic is extensive, deep and worthy of keen study.

The entire Soviet cinema industry was a powerful machine where entertainment, propaganda and finance worked in a steep mix. Back in 1938, the production and distribution of films; research institutes working on cinema; film and equipment factories; specialised educational institutions; and publishing houses specialising in film literature were consolidated into a single system. This whole structure worked with one accord until the end of the Union’s existence. Consequently, the local film industry cannot but be a kind of “Hollywood” – that is, both a production base and an attractive, mysterious “dream factory” and a laboratory of meanings at the same time.

It often happened that the destinies of the directors and actors of the cinema of the Soviet period were worthy of a film adaptation. Let’s give an example of Henry Gabai, a combat pilot of the Great Patriotic War, who lost an eye in a crash, was captured and escaped. After the war, he graduated from the VGIK and became one of the brightest directors of the “new wave” in Soviet cinema. I also remember Mikhail Kalik, who went through the heavy burden of camp life and who later directed one of the best films of the sixties, “Goodbye, Boys”. In other words, the whole essence of cinema is based on the personality of the Hero – whoever he is – a screen star, an actor, or a person who triggers the mechanisms of filming processes. ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘passionarity’ are words native to the psychology of cinematography. All this brings cinema and contemporary art much closer together, namely, characterisation – the phenomenon of exposing meanings into living figures – and it doesn’t matter if they are acting or living their real lives.

And what about the animation created on the territory of the USSR? It is important that for many viewers, it is an animated film that becomes the first introduction to the art of cinema in life. This is a more related type of screen art in relation to the classical types of art – graphics and painting. The moment of application of the artist’s hands in the truest sense is important in it. It doesn’t matter what the object is drawn with – a brush or a machine – the living nerve of the author runs through it. How many animated films were made in the old days? Brilliant and not so brilliant – they lead us from childhood to adulthood…

Our exhibition can be considered a kind of mini film factory of a wide variety of stars – big and small – artists constructing their worlds under the charm of great cinema. Some literally, some indirectly and from afar, but all together create their own event film as the best gallery shots. This is our holiday! Let the piano player play merrily, and the movie projector lamp shines brightly!

Curators: Olga Turchina, Konstantin Zvezdochetov