Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The film ?Preliminaries? traces the history of the statue ?Worker and Kolkhoz Woman? by Vera Mukhina. This statue was originally designed for the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, where it stood opposite the pavilion of Nazi Germany, enacting an antagonism that would result in a catastrophic war. It was later moved to Moscow and erected in front of the Exhibition of National Achievements of the Economy, which to the contemporaries appeared as a promise of a radiant future. After World War II, the statue became the emblem of the biggest film company of the Soviet Union, Mosfilm, and is shown at the beginning of every Mosfilm movie since 1947. In deciphering the statue?s diverse symbolisms and connections to the historical contexts, the film investigates into the notion of future as a central topic in the politics and culture of the Stalinist era. Exploring subjects like the War, Socialist Realism, and show trials, the film attempts to deconstruct a politics of the symbol that results from an ideology of the future, in which the present is neglected since it is considered as nothing but the preliminary future. Images from present-day Moscow ? the statue in front of a post-Communist amusement park, the surroundings of the Mosfilm studios, and the Red Square populated by Party leader doppelgangers ? are combined with stills from Stalinist films as well as with projected interviews (with Naum Kleiman, Gayane Ambartsumyan, Sergei Nikitin) set up in a situation slightly reminiscent of a trial hearing. The film thus enacts a preliminary inquiry on issues inherent in the notion of a future that is taken for granted and hence doesn?t even need to be realised ? a future that is now our past.

Romana Schmalisch studied Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She was a resident artist in several stipend programs, among others as a researcher at the Fine Art Department of Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, and in the Berlin Senate`s stipend program in London. Robert Schlicht studied philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin. Together they develop projects at the interface of film and theory, investigating cinematic representations and the representability of historical processes and social structures.