Russian Kino/Film

The breadth of art in London is astonishing. Did you know that 2014 is the UK/Russia year of culture? Neither did I until today. GRAD, the Gallery for Russian Arts and Design in London, is showing Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen (CLICK). It claims the twenties were the "golden age" of Soviet film posters and shows some fine examples. This one is the Stenberg Brothers' poster for Sergei Eisenstein's silent masterpiece Battleship Potemkin (1925). The blurb skips the sometimes fractious relationship between Eisenstein and Stalin. One of Eisenstein's producers was denounced as a traitor by Stalin and executed (CLICK). Film buffs must see Eisenstein's classic epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). Prokofiev's score for Alexander Nevsky is still in record shops.