At the Art Gallery of NSW - COSMIC FUTURES: VISIONARY RUSSIAN CINEMA - Season starts November 4

The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko, USSR, 1977)

In 1915, Russian artist Kazimir Malevich’s Black square heralded a beginning and end for modern art. Cosmic futures asks, where to from here? In the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917, cinema became a new testing ground for bold aesthetic experimentation. Malevich’s impulse to free art from the ‘dead weight of the real world’ migrated from the black square to the white screen. A new utopian state needed a new film language. 

Screening in conjunction with the exhibition Masters of modern art from the Hermitage, this film series unites early Soviet slapstick, Moscow high melodrama and sci-fi masterpieces. 

That’s the opening couple of sentences from the Art Gallery of NSW film season titled Cosmic futures: Visionary Russian cinemawhich runs from November to February (with a Christmas break) at the AGNSW Domain Theatre. Film titles include major work by Alexander Sokurov, Dziga Vertov, Alexander Medvedkin, Andrei Tarkovsky, Larisa Shepitko, Mikhail Kalatozov, Chantal Akerman and Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Full details if you click here. 

Aelita (Yakov Protazanov, USSR, 1924)

The season opens on November 4 with a special cine-concert featuring the silent classic  Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) on the silver screen, with a newly commissioned live score by acclaimed Sydney electronic artist Lucy Cliché.