Reenactment [reenactment]
is sometimes conceived of as anathema to nonfiction.
But there's no getting around the fact that forms of reenacting (or enacting or dramatizing) past events have always been part of nonfiction film and documentary forms. From the Reproduction of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (Lubin, 1897) to The Passion Play at Oberammergau (1898); from Nanook building his igloo to Gerald L. K. Smith playing himself in a 1937 March of Time newsreel; from Errol Morris shooting in-studio dramatizations of the murder of a Dallas police officer in The Thin Blue Line (1987) to Philippe Petit revisiting his own 1974 tight-rope walk between the World Trade Center twin towers in the great documentary Man on a Wire (2008).
is sometimes conceived of as anathema to nonfiction.
But there's no getting around the fact that forms of reenacting (or enacting or dramatizing) past events have always been part of nonfiction film and documentary forms. From the Reproduction of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (Lubin, 1897) to The Passion Play at Oberammergau (1898); from Nanook building his igloo to Gerald L. K. Smith playing himself in a 1937 March of Time newsreel; from Errol Morris shooting in-studio dramatizations of the murder of a Dallas police officer in The Thin Blue Line (1987) to Philippe Petit revisiting his own 1974 tight-rope walk between the World Trade Center twin towers in the great documentary Man on a Wire (2008).
This "Re-Enactments of 1917 in Film" conference brings some quite rare film material to the fore. [see announcement below from NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia -- http://jordanrussiacenter.org/event/re-enactments-of-1917-in-film/ ]
On October 26 this year, the Museum of Modern Art screened two re-united pieces of footage (from Swedish and Russian sources) documenting the Soviets' 1920 spectacular ritual re-staging of the October Revolution of 1917. Never a film release per se, the very officially commissioned film recorded a giant outdoor stage event. [Zizek wrote about it: "A Plea for Leninist Intolerance," Critical Inquiry (Winter 2002): http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/a-plea-for-leninist-intolerance.]
On the site where the historical events occurred three years earlier, a team of directors, actors, and extras mounted a pageant in Petrograd in which Reds and Whites vied for the space outside of the Winter Palace (of the deposed czar). A few thousand people played roles in the production, witnessed by some 100,000 others.
The Storming reenactment of 1920 took place at night (like the events of 1917). Therefore, all the FILMED actions had to be shot during the daytime REHEARSAL for the reenactment (except the evening fireworks).
Here are a few snapshots I took of the MoMA screen during scholar Yuri Tsivian's slide show before the film screening last month.
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| (1) drawing (aerial view) of the Winter Palace "set" (1920)
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| (2) The Women's Battalion of Death! (see Kristen Harper's posting -- http://nonfictionfilmhistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/women-in-non-fiction-war-films.html ) |
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| (3) Actor of 1920 playing General Kerensky, the Russian provisional government Prime Minister of 1917. (The Keaton resemblance must be coincidental, since Buster was only just emerging as a film star in '20.) ______________________________________________________________________________ 
(4) Fireworks [!] ended the 1920 spectacle! Here's a film frame enlargement of same.
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CONFERENCE: Re-Enactments of 1917 in Film
Co-sponsored by NYU Department of Comparative Literature
and Department of Cinema Studies.
When thinking about the October Revolution we habitually imagine a single event with far-reaching historical consequences. We sometimes forget that history does not follow nature’s laws of causality but rather was an interaction between revolutionary technologies, incremental changes in knowledge, and necessary politico-economical development, which themselve have stirred up European societies since Modernity. Furthermore, we are seldom cognisant of the role media has played in the telling, writing, showing and conception thereof. Living in post-historical times, we need to give new meaning to the events and dates we are inheriting from European History (writ large.)
This conference focuses on a radical form of “historical imagination” (Hayden White) as exemplified by the October Revolution. Our aim is to describe how the multi-layered process of historical change was modeled by the classical arts of literature or theater and by the new media, such as cinema, into a special kind of event. How did it happen that we have come to associate this complex process solely with the storming of the Winter Palace on October 25th in 1917?
uncredited photo from the conference website.
The Re-Enactments of 1917 in Film Conference focuses on a number of representational techniques, which appeared around 1927 and aided in an epic history with a dramatic event. For instance, after the release of Sergei Eisenstein’s film October and Esfir Shub’s chronicle The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty great discussions arose on the difference between fact and fiction since re-enactments had been widely used, due to – and as substitute for – the lack of actual documentation. Conference sessions detail how the mythologies of folklore, the poetics of avant-garde art, and the utopia of new media, shaped the figure of the October Revolution.
And finally, the question is posed: Don’t we need to save the date?
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PROGRAM SCHEDULE:
all events in the NYU Dept. of Cinema Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th floor.
Sunday, November 17 room 674
6:00 PM Shub’s Padenie Dinastii Romanovykh (Introduction by Keith Sanborn)
7:15 PM Pudovkin’s The End of St. Petersburg (Introduction by Anke Hennig)
Monday, November 18 Michelson Theater
Panel I: 9:00 AM to 11 AM
• Anke Hennig (Free), Introduction
• Mikhail Iampolski (NYU)
“Revolution as a dynamic form”
• Oksana Bulgakova (Mainz)
“The Storming of the Winter Palace and its filmic reenactment in 1927,1937, 1957 and 1993: From Oktober to Misfire“
Panel II: 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM
• Nancy Condee (U of Pittsburgh)
• Yuri Tsivian (U of Chicago) “Re-storming the Winter Palace: The Back Stage Story”
• Daria Khitrova (U of Chicago) “Re-storming the Winter Palace: What Happened that Night”
3:00 PM Screening: Evreinov’s footage, Storming of the Winter Palace
4:00 PM Roundtable I: Re-enactment: Art, Memory, Media
5:30 PM Screening: Barnet’s Moskva v Oktjabre
6:30 PM Roundtable II: Invention of Historical Events: Film, Documentary
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