Arts Alliance announces today that it has acquired Revolution – New Art for a New World, a new feature documentary from Foxtrot Films (Looking for Lowry, The Strange World of Barry Who?) created with the support of Alisher Usmanov, Founder of the Art, Science and Sport Charity Foundation.
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Margy Kinmonth, Revolution – New Art for a New World is a bold and exciting feature documentary that encapsulates a momentous period in the history of Russia and the Russian Avant-Garde.
Drawing on the collections of major Russian institutions, contributions from contemporary artists, curators, and performers and personal testimony from the descendants of those involved, the film brings the artists of the Russian Avant-Garde to life. It tells the stories of artists like Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich and others – pioneers who flourished in response to the Utopian challenge of building a New Art for a New World, only to be broken by implacable authority after 15 short years.
Stalin’s rise to power marked the close of this momentous period, consigning the Avant Garde to obscurity. Yet the Russian Avant-Garde continues to exert a lasting influence over art movements up to the present day. Revolution – New Art for a New World confirms this, exploring the fascination that these colourful paintings, inventive sculptures and propaganda posters retain over the modern consciousness 100 years on.
Revolution – New Art for a New World was filmed entirely on location in Moscow, St. Petersburg and London, with access to The State Tretyakov Gallery, The State Russian Museum, The State Hermitage Museum and in co-operation with The Royal Academy of Arts, London. The film features paintings previously banned and unseen for decades, and masterpieces which rarely leave Russia. Contributors include Museum Directors Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky and Zelfira Tregulova and film director Andrei Konchalovsky. The film also features Matthew Macfadyen, Tom Hollander, James Fleet, Eleanor Tomlinson and Daisy Bevan.
I was inspired, as an artist, to discover how many of the descendants of Russian Avant-Garde artists are themselves working as artists today. Access to their intensely moving stories brings to life this extraordinary period of artistic innovation, which continues to exert such a powerful legacy a hundred years on. Margy Kinmonth (Director)
The film is is slated for theatres in late Autumn 2016, ahead of the 2017 centenary anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Image credit: ‘Fantasy’ (1925) by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. Courtesy of The State Russian Museum.