Magical History Tour: Between Artistic Innovation and Political Agitation

The December programme of the Magical History Tour will travel to four regions, span three decades and address two central cinematic points of reference that appear to repel and attract each other: art and politics. The juxtaposition of 1930s Soviet, "anti-Fascist" films with works of the avant-garde artists’ association FEKS (Factory of the Eccentric Actor) reveals two exemplary variants of political practice in the medium of film: direct, political, propagandistic agitation on the one hand, and experiments with new, provocative forms of expression – deemed scandalous at the time – that reject narrative and aesthetic traditions, on the other. Not all artistic innovations contain a political statement (see the films of Sjöström and Stiller), but with the start of World War One, cinema entered into the field of tension between political and/or artistic interests, the various manifestations of which can be critically retraced across national and ideological borders this month.