Special screening of the silent cinema masterpiece Child of the Big City (1914)
by Evgenii Bauer
With a new score for ensemble and electronics by Andrew Knight-Hill
Live accompaniment by the New Music Ensemble
Curated by Maria Korolkova and Margarita Vaysman
The film will be screened with English subtitles
Launched in 2019, Bauer Project is a practice-as-research initiative that aims to explore gender and sexuality in early Russian
film through sound and music. Its first screening will premiere on 26th April 2019 at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews, as a part of the Byre World Series collaboration between the Department of Russian at the University of
St Andrews and School of Design at the University of Greenwich. The screening is curated by Maria Korolkova and Margarita Vaysman with a specially-commissioned score by composer Andrew Knight-Hill.
Evgenii Bauer (1865–1917) was Russia’s most highly paid director of silent cinema, known for his
extraordinary use of set design, mise-en-scene, and camera work. Since rediscovery of his films in the1980s, Bauer has come to be seen as the major film-maker of his era not only in Russia, but all over the world. The topics
he covered in his productions – of love, female emancipation, class, society – were ahead of his time, and they still with audiences today.
Child of the Big City (1914) is Bauer’s second film and one of his best known productions.
The film tells the story of Mary, an ambitious young seamstress, who improves her lot by becoming the mistress of the wealthy Viktor Kravtsov, an idealistic but unhappy gentleman. Seduced by the glamour of high society, Mary
eventually bankrupts Viktor, leading him to suicide.
“Bauer’s films are often described as the work of a ‘woman’s director’. The female protagonists are usually in the centre of his
productions, and they are consistently shown to be emotionally stronger, more dynamic and more engaging than their male counterparts. Even when they behave badly, Bauer tends to refrain from moral comment on their behaviour. Nor does he propose easy solutions
to the dilemmas his protagonists face. The overriding impression left by Bauer’s films en masse, and by his extraordinary Child of the Big City in particular, is of a society riven by gender and class anxieties, which are
far from being resolved”. Rachel Morley