Extraordinary opening of Sergei Eisenstein: The Anthropology of Rhythm

The curator Marie Rebecchi will guide the visitors through the exhibition

Sergei Eisenstein, still from Mexican footage. Courtesy: Gosfilmofond, Moscow

Sergei Eisenstein, still from Mexican footage. Courtesy: Gosfilmofond, Moscow


On Saturday, October 14, 2017, Nomas Foundation will be exceptionally open from 11 am to 6 pm.

On this occasion, Marie Rebecchi will offer guided tours of the exhibition Sergei Eisenstein: The Anthropology of Rhythm, curated by her and Elena Vogman, in collaboration with the artist and typographer Till Gathmann.

The exhibition explores the intersecting aesthetic and political dimensions of the anthropology of rhythm in Eisenstein's unfinished film projects: Que viva Mexico!(1931–1932), Bezhin Meadow (1935–1937), and Fergana Canal (1939). In his images from Mexico and his later anthropologically-oriented film projects in Ukraine and Uzbekistan, Eisenstein brings the two meanings of “revolution” into play. Here we perceive the emerging relations of history poised between repetition and irruption, return and revolt, between a single destiny – a body or a gesture – and the social and political narrative that constitutes its background. Each of these film projects invents a new and unique cinematographic approach, yet they all share a common archaeological model of history and an anthropological construction of the gaze. By focusing on the representation of people, in particular the variety of ways in which Eisenstein filmed human faces, the materials presented in the exhibition illuminate hitherto unknown documentary and ethnographic facets of Eisenstein’s work.