Mad Love: Three Films by Evgenii Bauer

Synopsis: Three films made by the Russian pioneer Evgenii Bauer, highlighting his preoccupation with doomed love and death as well as his creative use of light and mastery of camera movement. He was one of Russia’s leading theatre designers and it was as a set designer that he first entered films, working for the producer Aleksandr Drankov. In a career spanning only four years, until his premature death in 1917, he made over 80 films, of which more than 20 survive. Suppressed after the Revolution, his films re-emerged in the late 1980s to strong critical interest.

A specially commissioned new music score accompanies each film - by Laura Rossi (for TWILIGHT OF A WOMAN’S SOUL); Nicholas Brown (for AFTER DEATH); and Joby Talbot (for THE DYING SWAN). Also included is a video essay by Russian film historian Yuri Tsivian.
Country: Russian Federation
Year of release: 2002
Year of production: 1913-1916
Subjects: Media studies
Keywords: cinema - Russia; silent films

Title: Twilight of a woman’s soul
Synopsis: Bauer’s first surviving film, made in 1913, soon after the start of his career as a director. It already shows his masterful use of deep-focus photography.
Duration: 49 mins
Technical information: Silent
Title: After death
Synopsis: Made in 1915 and adapted from Turgenev’s story Klara Milich. Imbued with one of Bauer’s favourite themes - the psychological hold of the dead over the living. Includes some innovative camera movements.
Duration: 46 mins
Technical information: Silent
Title: Dying swan, The
Synopsis: One of Bauer’s last films before the February revolution. Taken from a novel by Zoia Barantevich about an artist striving to depict death on his canvas. Includes an imaginitive handling of a dream sequence in which the heroine, a mute dancer, sees herself led by a forbidding, nun-like figure to a cell where disembodied hands clutch at her from the darkness.
Duration: 49 mins
Technical information: Silent

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