| Vera Karalli, Vitol'd Polonskii, Nina
Chernova, V. Demert, A. Ugriumov, Andrei Gromov It was only in
the dying days of the Soviet regime that the work of the Russian
film pioneer Evgenii Bauer was rediscovered and celebrated. Before
a premature death in 1917 he made over 80 films, of which more than
20 survive. This selection highlights his preoccupation with doomed
love and death as well as his creative use of light and mastery
of camera movement. It also features a specially commissioned new
music score for each of the films, by Laura Rossi, Nicholas Brown,
and Joby Talbot.
Twilight Of A Woman's Soul (1913) is Bauer's first surviving film
and already shows his masterful use of deep-focus photography. After
Death (1915) is adapted from a story by Turgenev and is imbued with
one of Bauer's favourite themes: the psychological hold of the dead
over the living. The Dying Swan (1916) takes a sardonic view of
the popular obsession with morbidity and includes a chilling dream
sequence.
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