Page 55 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

36 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
who actively supported Soviet power and, as a result, occupied key posts in
cinema immediately after the October Revolution. Among them we should name
first of all the famous director and actor of pre-Revolutionary cinema, Vladimir
Gardin, who in 1918 was head of the fiction film section of the All-Russian
Photographic and Cinematographic Section (VFKO) of the Russian Soviet
Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment
(Narkompros). His associate was his old friend Vasili Ilyin, a painter, an actor and
likewise a supporter of Volkonsky’s system. Gardin had been interested in the
training of the new actor in 1916 and had at that time planned with Ilyin the
establishment of a ‘Studio of Cinema Art’. In his diary entry for 15 December 1916
Gardin noted, ‘Today Vasili Sergeyevich Ilyin is coming again to continue our
never-ending discussion about the studio, the new army of film-makers who will
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conquer the world.’ He characterised his attitude towards cinema at that time in
the following way: ‘I have not withdrawn from cinema, but I have been dreaming of
a studio and not of productions… I am interested above all in research into working
methods.’ 16
Because of the war the studio never started work. After the Revolution and after
holding the leading position in VFKO, Gardin achieved the improbable, the
opening of the First State Cinema School, which he headed. Initially Gardin’s plan
had a Cyclopean character: it was his intention to open ten schools, each with a
thousand students, and to create on the basis of these a new ‘army’ of film-
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makers and, although this was not made clear, perhaps also a new
anthropological type of man. There is little doubt that the existence of the school
owed much to Gardin’s enthusiasm for Volkonsky’s new anthropology. It is
enough to look at the complement of teachers. First Sergei Volkonsky was invited
to teach there and take charge of the courses on the ‘system of expressive man’.
Many years later Gardin recalled Volkonsky’s courses from 1919—20: ‘The
students had their hands and feet entangled in concentric, normal-eccentric and
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concentro-concentric positions.’ Then there was Ilyin, of whom Kuleshov wrote in
his memoirs, ‘Ilyin was an enthusiastic admirer of the Delsarte school and applied
its teachings to our work at every opportunity. In addition, he developed and
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perfected it himself. We were extremely pleased with Ilyin’s research.’ Elsewhere
Kuleshov affirmed that it was in fact Ilyin who introduced him to the Delsarte
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system. One of the other teachers was Nikolai Foregger, creator of the machine
dances which were to become famous in the 1920s and were so obviously linked to
the ‘new anthropology’. At one time the school was headed by Valentin Turkin
who shared the general interest in Volkonsky’s system. The school maintained
particularly close contacts with the Experimental Heroic Theatre directed by Boris
Ferdinandov, who had created the Dalcrozian theory of ‘metro-rhythm’. For a
while Kuleshov’s Workshop even took shelter in the building of this theatre. The
appearance within the film school’s walls of Kuleshov, who had been Gardin’s
protégé since 1918 (when Gardin had invited him to take charge of the newsreel
and re-editing section of VFKO), was to be expected. Kuleshov professed a
Delsartism that was even more orthodox than that of the other teachers.