Remontages: Ėjzenštejn and The Anthropology of Rhythm

Book Launch, Screening and Talk – REMONTAGES Eisenstein and The Anthropology of Rhythm

with Clemens von Wedemeyer, Till Gathmann, Marie Rebecchi and Elena Vogman

6:00–7:30pm | MAXXI, sala Graziella Lonardi Buontempo

Free entrance

NERO is pleased to announce the book launch of "Sergei Eisenstein and The Anthropology of Rhythm" which will include a screening and a talk. 

When opening Sergei Eisenstein’s archive, a vertiginous complexity challenges established categories and our usual way of seeing. The formal and technical details of several documents test our historical and political imagination. The book "Sergei Eisenstein and the Anthropology of Rhythm" by Marie Rebecchi, Elena Vogman and Till Gathmann (NERO, 2017) presents a remontage of documents from the director’s archives in Moscow, revealing their potential relation to the present. This yet unacknowledged body of work features Eisenstein’s Mexican project "Que viva Mexico!" (1931–1932), the destroyed "Bezhin Meadow" (1935–1937) and "Fergana Canal" (1939), halted before filming even started. In Eisenstein’s footage, the organic and the mechanical, regular and irregular rhythms, forms and gestures become anthropological instruments. The anthropology of rhythm is an attempt to find “melody in the material.”

Together with the artist Clemens von Wedemeyer the work of archival "remontage" will be taken into account, drawing particular attention towards the role of film extras as elements of both cinematographic and political history. Fragments from Wedemeyer’s work on the politics of casting, including the footage of Cinecittà productions ("The Cast" 2013) and the work of Teatro Valle Occupato will be discussed in relation to Eisenstein’s use of non-professional actors (“tipazh”). 

The book was published on the occasion of the exhibition "Sergei Eisenstein and the Anthropology of Rhythm," curated by Marie Rebecchi and Elena Vogman in collaboration with Till Gathmann at the Nomas Foundation, in Rome.

The discussion will be held in English. 

The event was made possible by the Goethe Institut.

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