Breaking Free - Soviet Cinema

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Matthew Sweet reflects on the impact of the Russian Revolution and music for Soviet film as part of the "Breaking Free" season, with scores for Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky, War and Peace, and The New Babylon. Lenin declared "that of all the arts the important for us is the cinema" recognising the propaganda potential that it offered and means of spreading the message of Bolshevism across Russia. His enthusiasm for cinema prompted a surge of inventive film making that has given the world some of its most discussed and influential cinema, featuring scores from some of the leading composers of the day. Matthew charts Soviet Cinema through its music, from Eisenstein to Tarkovsky, with scores by Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Edmund Meisel, Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov and Eduard Artemiev, among others.