Soviet Expressionism: from Caligari to Stalin.
This book was published in early 2020. It is a study on the influence of German expressionism and expressionist aesthetics in general on Soviet cinema in the 1920s-1960s. The book consists of articles about fifty films of different directions and genres, the authors examine in detail both canonical works and little-known masterpieces of Soviet cinema (e.g. Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Mikhail Kalatozov, Andrei Tarkovsky). The phenomenon of "Soviet expressionism" in such volume and completeness was presented to the audience for the first time.
Combining the cinema frames with the silent movie titles, a series of collages was created to support the storytelling of the articles. Later the collages became posters and stickers and matches for the book promotional event.
A story of every movie begins with a piece of european or soviet expessionists art of the same era. Among the artists are Ernst Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Frans Masereel, Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Yevgeni Yenej, Isaak Spinnell, etc. Each of them reflects the mood of the movie and sometimes the similarities are amazing.
Thank you!
