For film, the NEP meant a sudden reappearance of film stock and equipment belonging to the producers who had not emigrated. In 1921, as the country faces tremendous problems, Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy (NEP), which for several years permitted private management of business. All came from other fields and discovered cinema in the midst of the Revolution’s ferment. None of the important filmmakers of the Montage style was a veteran of the pre-Revolutionary industry. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford, were a tremendous influence on the filmmakers of the emerging Soviet movement. In May 1920, Vsevolod Pudovkin made his acting debut in a play presented by Kuleshov’s State Film School.
In 1920, Sergei Eisenstein worked briefly in a train carrying propaganda to the troops in the Civil War and returned the same year to Moscow to stage plays in a worker’s theatre. This grounding in theory would be the basis of the Montage style. Thus, even before they were able to make films, Kuleshov and his young pupils were working at the world’s first film school and writing theoretical essays on the new art form. Kuleshov was the most conservative among the young Soviet filmmakers since he was trying to systematize principles of editing similar to the continuity practices in classical Hollywood.
#Soviet montage film movement series
Lev Kuleshov, who was teaching in the newly founded State School on Cinema Art, did a series of experiments by editing together different footage from different sources into a whole to create an impression of continuity. Dziga Vertov began working on documentaries of the war and soon handled new reels at the age of 20. Having to face equipment shortages and living in difficult conditions, a bunch of young filmmakers made moves that soon result to a national cinema movement. And in July 1918, when the government’s film subsection of the State Commission of Education put strict controls on the existing supplies of raw film stock, the largest firms fled to other countries, taking all the equipment they could. These film companies resisted on following the new policy made after the Revolution to nationalize all private properties. After the Russian Revolution in October 1917, the New Soviet government faced a difficult task of handling different sectors of life and like other industries the film industry took several years to rebuild outputs both in production and distribution that could help serve the aims of the new government.ĭuring World War I, there were a number of private production companies operating in Moscow and Petersburg and since imports were cut off, these companies did well in making films catering the domestic market.
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