Moscow’s VGIK Film School’s Upcoming Hundredth Anniversary

Next year, the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) will mark the 100 year anniversary of its founding, when it was established as the Moscow Film School in 1919 under the direction of Vladimir Gardin. Its current name refers to the Soviet director, screenwriter, and teacher, Sergei Gerasimov. It was the world’s first film school. Created during the Russian Civil War, VGIK has its roots in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Three intersecting influences merged to allow for the unique circumstances out of which not only scores of influential students would arise but so would many members of its faculty who would go on to determine some of the very founding principles of film production and film theory. The first of these influences was aesthetic, Soviet Constructivism. Second, was the theoretical, which, with figures such as Sergei Eisenstein, was closely allied with Constructivism. Finally, the third was political.  In all three cases, aesthetic, theoretical, and political, the principles were founded on revolutionary thought and the application of Marxism in the new Soviet state.

For the Constructivists, art was to serve the interests of the Revolution and the Soviet state. But rooted in a formalism that emphasized geometric abstraction, Constructivism was far afield from more accepted notions of what art was supposed to look like.  Indeed, it was revolutionary. This reinforced the need among its adherents for an intellectual and artistic avant-garde. They would create the conditions on the ground for the eventual triumph of new ways of seeing the world, just as the Soviet Communist Party supplied the political vanguard leading to the victory of Communism in Russia.

The second leg, the theoretical, emerged from the aesthetic tenets of Constructivism and an unexpected employment of philosophical materialism to film production. It revolved around the theory of Soviet montage. Its most noted proponent was the filmmaker, film writer, and film teacher, Sergei Eisentein. He believed that Soviet montage, which involved fast paced editing of separate and distinct shots to produce an abstract emotion or thought, was akin to Marxist dialectics. Imagine one film shot as a thesis in collision with another separate film shot, which is an antithesis. Impacting upon the viewer, the collision produces a new synthesis—or abstract feeling or response.

 

Perhaps the most famous example of this notion is in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. The sequence of shots in the scene of the Odessa Steps features Russian Cossacks literally oppressing the masses pleading for justice. A line of faceless soldiers shot from both high angle as they march on the crowd and low angle, when the viewer is put in the point of view of a member of the masses, steadily builds to a point of outrage: a baby carriage is sent hurtling down the steps after the shooting of the baby’s mother. At that moment, the revolutionary sailors aboard the Potemkin fire the battleship’s guns at the Cossacks. Immediately thereafter, a series of shots of separate stone lions are sequenced together to represent the awakening and arising of the masses and the overthrow of tsarist tyranny.

Eisenstein went on to explain his theory of film and montage in several works. He joined other Soviet filmmakers and artists in the journal LEF (and later New LEF), which argued for an ideological foundation for the arts. One of Eisenstein’s students, the American filmmaker and educator, Jay Leyda, later translated Eisenstein’s thoughts on film in two books, Film Form and The Film Sense. Subsequently, Leyda also published what is still considered the most complete history of Soviet film, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film.

Leyda is an interesting figure who exemplifies the far reaching influence of early Soviet filmmakers directly and VGIK, where he studied with Eisenstein. For Leyda not only translated the Soviet filmmaker’s writing, he also worked with Eisenstein, most notably on the lost film Bezhin Meadow. (Bezhin Meadow is “lost” because the film ran afoul of Soviet censors and their adherence to Stalin’s preferred aesthetic of Socialist Realism, although portions of the film were later recovered and a restoration attempted in the 1960s.) Returning to the United States and New York, Leyda became one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art’s film department. From 1959 to 1964, Leyda was in China, working at Beijing’s Film Archive. The result of this stay was his scholarly study of Chinese cinema, Dianying: An Account of Films and Film Audiences in China. Leyda spent the last 15 years of his life and career teaching at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. His death, in 1988, came but one year before Communism began to unravel in Eastern Europe whence the opposition to Communism eventually moved to dissolve the Soviet Union itself. Thus Leyda’s career very nearly paralleled the birth and death of Soviet Communism as well as the wellspring and destruction of the arts in the USSR.

As can be seen in the career of Eisenstein, it is the third and final leg of influences, the political, that most influenced the direction of filmmaking and film aesthetics in the Soviet Union. Socialist Realism found the Constructivists and many of the films produced by early Soviet filmmakers “too difficult” for the masses. And, in fact, not only too difficult for the masses but for the leaders too, especially Stalin who preferred and demanded more traditional and “realistic” forms of entertainment. He also required a positive representation of life in the Soviet that would lionize none other than Stalin. (Portraying Stalin on the screen could sometimes be dangerous for an actor’s career. Mikheil Gelovani, the Georgian actor who most often portrayed Stalin on Soviet films soon found his popularity make him suspect in the Soviet dictator’s eyes. While Gelovani was never sent to the gulag, he was so closely identified with Stalin that he could get no other roles before or after Stalin’s death.)

Meanwhile, although Stalin may have required Soviet citizens to watch only films that glorified the Revolution and Stalin and that followed a similar aesthetic to those films made in Hollywood, he himself preferred American gangster and adventure films, along with Westerns. Stalin and Socialist Realism yielded lean years for Soviet filmmakers and Soviet productions. Filmmakers such as Eisenstein not only came under suspicion but also found themselves punished for their art. Nothing illustrates this situation better than Eisenstein’s production of Ivan the Terrible. Ivan was to be a three part trilogy, commissioned by Stalin, who admired Ivan. Eisenstein as well intended for the films to be a veiled portrait of Stalin. Part I was a success. Part II, however, angered Stalin with its depiction of Ivan’s abuse of power. The film was confiscated and remained unreleased until five years after the dictator’s death. Part III never came near completion. But for a few stills and sequences, all footage was destroyed. So much was Eisenstein considered dangerous at this point that when he died of a heart attack in 1948, rumors that Stalin had the director killed came to be commonplace and even persist until today.

After Stalin’s death began the long, slow recovery for the arts and filmmaking, in particular, in the USSR. During this period, VGIK became a cornerstone of the Soviet film industry, a virtual gatekeeper for those wanting to enter the profession. As a result, it also became a hothouse for talent. It produced figures that would not only rise to the top of their field in the Soviet Union but also acquire international acclaim. Among them would be directors such as Sergei Bondarchuk (War and Peace, Waterloo, and Red Bells) who also taught at VGIK, Andrei Tarkovsky ( Andrei Rublev, Solaris, and Stalker), Andrei Konchalovsky (Siberiade, Maria’s Lovers, and Runaway Train), and Vladimir Menshov (Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, The Envy of Gods).

Today, VGIK remains one of the most highly recognized film schools in the world. Its legacy not only extends to Russian filmmakers but the establishment of the Beijing Film Academy (in 1950) and an ever growing alumni. In post-Soviet Russia, competition for a place at VGIK remains intense. The opportunity for students outside of Russia gaining admission also still remains in place. But all class work is in Russian and admission requires fluency in Russian. Usually a six month to one year language program for non-Russian students is required before enrollment.