Bezhin lug

Bezhin lug

BEZHIN LUG  is a belated attempt to salvage the remnants of Eisenstein’s film of the same title, which tells the story of the conflict between a young pioneer and his father, who is scheming against the local Soviet collective farm; the consequences will be fatal. When the shoot began in 1935, Leyda was a student in Eisenstein’s directing class and was integrated into the team as a set photographer. BEZHIN LUG became a key experience for him about which he later published multiple articles. In early 1937, the project, which had already been stopped on several occasions, was finally stopped for good based on orders from above, and the material already shot was allegedly destroyed in 1941 during a German air attack on Moscow. In the 60s, however, a large number of individual frames were found in Eisenstein’s estate which turned out to be the first frames of each reel that had been already shot. From these individual images, which were supplemented by photos taken by Jay Leyda during the shoot, Sergei Yutkevich and Naum Kleiman edited together a photo film in 1968 that brought Eisenstein’s ideas to life.

Romance sentimentale

BEZHIN LUG is being screened together with Eisenstein’s first sound film ROMANCE SENTIMENTALE, which was shot in Paris and shows chanteuse Mara Griy accompanying herself on the piano as she sings a Russian ballad to a greyhound draped in a bearskin.

The print of BESCHIN LUG is from the Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin, the print of ROMANCE SENTIMENTALE from the archive of the Metropolis/Kinemathek Hamburg.