In the USSR of the early 1920s – a moment in time encapsulated by an incredible sense of liberation and the prospect of a future to be entirely written which offers a seemingly unlimited freedom to experiment – many young directors make outstanding masterpieces. They are the years of the friendship that links the kindred artistic temperaments of Isaac Babel and Sergei E·isenstein (who work together for years on a number of film projects, from Benya Krik to Beshin Lug, none of which are ever realised). From the starting point of this partnership, through great films and small discoveries, this section takes a look at a bloody historical moment (from the 1905 Revolution to Stalin’s regime of terror) that was interwoven with the destinies of great Ukrainian and Russian artists such as Vertov and Mikhoels, as well as Grossman and Askoldov, the direct heirs to Babel. But above all, it is an homage the city of Odesa, a famous location in the history of cinema, and to the Ukrainian productions of the VUFKU during that brief glimmer of freedom from 1924 to 1929.

Curated by Mariann Lewinsky