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The second installment of Anton Vidokle’s trilogy on Russian cosmism, The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun, looks at the poetic dimension of the solar cosmology of Soviet biophysicist Alexander Chizhevsky. Shot in Kazakhstan, where Chizhevsky was imprisoned and later exiled, the film introduces Сhizhevsky’s research into the impact of solar emissions on human sociology, psychology, politics, and economics in the form of wars, revolutions, epidemics, and other upheavals. It aligns the life of post-Soviet rural residents and the futurological projects of Russian cosmism to emphasize that the goal of the early Soviet breakthroughs aimed at the conquest of outer space was not so much technical acceleration, but the common cause of humankind in their struggle against the limitations of earthly life.
Anton Vidokle, born in 1965 in Moscow, Russia, is an artist, curator, and filmmaker currently living in New York and Berlin. In 1998 he founded e-flux, a publishing platform and archive, artist project, and curatorial platform.
Production: Anton Vidokle, New York
Screenplay: Anton Vidokle
Camera: Ayman Nahle
With: Kristina Isaykina
Format: DCP, Black/White & Color
Running time: 33 min
Language: Russian, English
Photo: © Anton Vidokle
