Page 86 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY 67
To facilitate the administrative responsibilities deriving from the decree, the
Commissariat created a new bureaucratic layer, the All-Russian Photographic and
Cinematographic Section (VFKO) which was to help co-ordinate local cinema
activities, especially the haphazard process of nationalising individual film
institutions. VFKO was to be the national agency linking the efforts of various
localities, especially the Moscow and Petrograd Cinema Committees. In its first
effort at general planning, VFKO collected an inventory of all prints that might be
available for exhibition. The chronic shortage of films to supply commercial
theatres encouraged VFKO to register for exhibition old tsarist films and pre-
Revolutionary imports. 16
Yet the weaknesses of the regime and the catch-as-catch-can nature of War
Communism were manifested in the implementation of the Commissariat’s
nationalisation authority. Lenin’s decree merely conferred on the Commissariat the
power to nationalise on an individual basis, and, in practice, nationalisation of
particular commercial institutions resulted from that institution’s failure. Most of
the nationalised institutions in cinema were movie theatres which had closed
because of lack of product. The net effect of the practice was that the government
took over closed theatres while working establishments remained in private hands.
By the late autumn of 1919, approximately one-third of cinema assets in Bolshevik-
controlled regions were nationalised: yet much of that represented dead weight. 17
The lack of Bolshevik authority in most regions of the country further
compromised the nationalisation policy. Far from preventing the hoarding or
transfer of materials–the decree’s announced goal–the threat of expropriation
posed by the decree actually encouraged private entrepreneurs to seek friendlier
political climes; this generally meant relocating to White-controlled areas in the
south. Indeed, cinema would not seem to be an industrial form readily subject to
nationalisation in times of emergency. Nationalisation worked best in heavy
industries, such as steel and mining, where the assets could not be packed in a
trunk and carried away. Film company owners simply carted off their inherently
portable equipment and inventories to the Crimea, leaving Bolshevik officials to
seize empty office buildings, barren shooting stages and darkened theatres. 18
During the entire period of War Communism, private cinema out-produced
government-affiliated producers in Moscow and Petrograd. The renegade firms in
the south derived from strong pre-Revolutionary film companies and could draw
on the expertise of experienced personnel. Lunacharsky and his colleagues in the
Commissariat may have noted with envy the level of activity of private companies.
From 1918 to 1921 private firms produced 296 fiction films, the lion’s share of
which–209–were feature-length. Government-registered productions during the
same period amounted to just 104 fiction films, only 13 of which were features. 19
There were also problems in the exhibition phase of the industry. According to
one Soviet estimate, only 1,000 permanent commercial theatres operated in
Russia in 1917, and many of those failed to survive the Civil War. Construction of
new permanent installations was out of the question for the time being; the economy
had no construction industry to speak of and little funding for expensive