A Matter of Light and Death: Evgenii Bauer's Svetotvorchestvo

Dr. Natascha Drubek

Evgenii Bauer’s films can best be described as svetotvorchestvo, a Russian word meaning Light-Art or Light-Creation.

 This neologism was coined in the 1910s to replace the imported word “cinematograph.” Bauer’s Light-Art is shaped by the Symbolist Silver Age. As a literary epoch Russian Symbolism had stretched over several decades and had already reached its pinnacle by the time Bauer was making his first film, and ideas within Symbolism permeated through to the performing and even some popular arts: the real world is rejected in favour of a higher reality, in the words of symbolist poet and philosopher V. Ivanov: “a realibus ad realiora.” In my lecture I will introduce you to Bauer’s visual presentation of realiora in and as cinema.

Bauer’s unique practise of Light-Art was able to absorb and transcend 15 years of cinema imported from abroad. How could he achieve this? Many of Bauer’s films tell stories of Death and Art – not only surpassing by far the Western attempts at a Film d’Art but also introducing a new type of protagonist - she strides into the Russian films as a divine being unknown to the world previously.

Natascha Drubek is a researcher, writer and editor in the area of Central and East European cinemas and cultures. She received her PhD from the University of Munich in Russian literature (Gogol’s eloquent corporis). She has held the following positions: 2006-2009 at the Film School FAMU, Prague, developing Hyperkino. 2009-2015: Heisenberg Fellow, 2013-14 at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; 2016 Visiting Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin; Convener of the conference: Films from ghettos and camps: http://www.terezin2014.com/en/. 2003-2014. Since 2015 she has been Editor in Chief of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe http://www.apparatusjournal.org/ She is the author of Russisches Licht (Russian Light From the Icon to Early Soviet Cinema, Boehlau, 2012) and several articles on Russian and Soviet cinema, including Evgenii Bauer.

A seminar hosted by the UCL SSEES Russian Cinema Research Group.
Convenors: Dr Phil Cavendish and Dr Rachel Morley