Esfir Shub
Birth : 1894-03-16, Surazh, Russian Empire
Death : 1959-09-21
History
Esfir Shub, also referred to as Esther Il'inichna Shub, was a pioneering Soviet filmmaker and editor in both the mainstream and documentary fields. She was one of few women to play a significant role behind the scenes in the Soviet film industry. She is best known for her trilogy of films, Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), The Great Road (1927), and The Russia of Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy (1928). Shub is credited as the creator of compilation film.
Esfir Shub was born into a family of landowners. She studied literature in Moscow, but after Revolution she began to attend the classes at the Institute for Women's Higher Education and then got a job as a 'theater officer' at the State Commissariat of Education. In the theatre she worked in collaboration with the famous avant-garde director Meyerhold and the poet Mayakovsky, who was one of her friends.
Shub joined the Goskino film company and met Dziga Vertov. Their professional friendship was lifelong, but stormy. Shub shared his belief in film's intrinsic ability to reveal aspects of reality not visible to the naked eye, but she became engaged more in the interpretation of the historical world than in only contemporary matters.
First Shub worked as a re-editor of foreign films for Soviet distribution. In 1927 (the tenth anniversary of Revolution) she made her first documentary film The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927). This film was the first part of the trilogy, which also consists of The Great Road (1927) and Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II (1928). In the process of making the trilogy, Shub had to contend with not only an overwhelming volume of material but also the problem of locating relevant footage. She often found that valuable documents of the pre-war period had been sold abroad or had been badly damaged in ill-equipped newsreel archives. Shub compensated the lack of material by using newly shot footage. Her films derive much of their power from this technique of providing a contemporary context for archival footage. Thus, Shub created the absolutely new genre 'historical compilation film'. She later claimed she just wanted to create 'editorialized newsreels'.
The critics and colleagues admired Shub's work, because she found a middle path between narrative and documentary forms. Sovkino denied her authorial rights for her trilogy claiming that she was just an editor. However, in 1935 Shub was awarded the title Honored Artist of the Republic.
In the beginning of the forties she collaborated with Vsevolod Pudovkin on the successful Twenty Years of Soviet Cinema (1940). Then she left Goskino to become chief editor of the 'News of the Day' at the central studio for documentary film in Moscow. Most of her later years were confined to editing duties. Shub was definitely the most prominent Soviet woman filmmaker of her generation.
Herself
In the early years of cinema, editors were usually women. This short documentary looks at how they wielded power, and how their work was made invisible.
Director
A commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, Native Land praises the early years of the Soviet Union.
Director
A feature-length documentary based on film reports from the Spanish civil war.
Editor
In this pioneering documentary, one of the earliest Soviet sound films, Shub shot a contemporary chronicle of the progress of establishing electricity across the Soviet nation, a struggle spearheaded by the Komsomol.
Writer
In this pioneering documentary, one of the earliest Soviet sound films, Shub shot a contemporary chronicle of the progress of establishing electricity across the Soviet nation, a struggle spearheaded by the Komsomol.
Director
In this pioneering documentary, one of the earliest Soviet sound films, Shub shot a contemporary chronicle of the progress of establishing electricity across the Soviet nation, a struggle spearheaded by the Komsomol.
Directing Lighting Artist
Writer
A visual composition of the world.
Director
A visual composition of the world.
Editor
Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II is a 1928 Soviet silent documentary film directed by Esfir Shub. The film is considered lost. Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II is the final film in Esfir Shub's trilogy of films that began with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) and continued with The Great Road (1927).
Writer
Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II is a 1928 Soviet silent documentary film directed by Esfir Shub. The film is considered lost. Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II is the final film in Esfir Shub's trilogy of films that began with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) and continued with The Great Road (1927).
Director
Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II is a 1928 Soviet silent documentary film directed by Esfir Shub. The film is considered lost. Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II is the final film in Esfir Shub's trilogy of films that began with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) and continued with The Great Road (1927).
Director
The Great Road is a 1927 Soviet silent documentary film directed by Esfir Shub. It is the second in Esfir Shub's trilogy of films that began with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) and concluded with Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II (1928).
Editor
A bold study on the dangers of prostitution in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It's sort of dramatic fiction that tells the story of Lyuba, which after irremediable events, loses his honor, being obliged to exercise the oldest profession in the world to survive. She hopes for better days and a new opportunity. The film also shows us the story of two other women who also need hope.
Writer
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty was pieced together by documentarian Esfir Shub from material recorded between 1913 and 1917, and represents the final years leading up to the Russian Revolution. Through editing, Shub casts a critical, ironic light on the former czarist regime. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty is the first film in Esfir Shub's trilogy that continued with The Great Road (1927), and concluded with Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II (1928).
Editor
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty was pieced together by documentarian Esfir Shub from material recorded between 1913 and 1917, and represents the final years leading up to the Russian Revolution. Through editing, Shub casts a critical, ironic light on the former czarist regime. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty is the first film in Esfir Shub's trilogy that continued with The Great Road (1927), and concluded with Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II (1928).
Director
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty was pieced together by documentarian Esfir Shub from material recorded between 1913 and 1917, and represents the final years leading up to the Russian Revolution. Through editing, Shub casts a critical, ironic light on the former czarist regime. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty is the first film in Esfir Shub's trilogy that continued with The Great Road (1927), and concluded with Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicolai II (1928).
Editor
A comedy starring Nina Shaternikova, The Skotinins is loosely based on the 18th century play The Minor by Denis Fonvizin. In it, the upper class is shown as both depraved and stupid, engaging a variety of absurd, over-the-top follies.
Editor
Originally titled Wings of a Serf in the USSR, this Russian historical pageant (original title: Krylya Kholopa) manages to pack a lot of detail -- and a great deal of nonsense -- into its scant 60 minutes. Throwing accuracy to the four winds, the screenplay deals with a fabricated romantic triangle involving 16th-century Czar Ivan (Leonid Leonidov), his wife the Czarina (Sofya Askarova) and his wife's paramour Nikita (Ivan Klyukvin). The celebrated brutality of Ivan is crystallized in a single moment wherein the czar throws a bowl of scalding soup into the face of his court jester. American critics who'd grown weary of the praise lavished on such Soviet classics as Potemkin seemed to delight in pointing out the deficiencies of Czar Ivan, the Terrible, as if to say "See? They aren't all classics!" Nonetheless, the film did record business when it opened at New York's Cameo Theater in March of 1928, two years after its original release. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Editor
The dashing mountaineer Zaur (B. Bestaev) kills a Russian "imperialist" thereby becoming an abrek, member of a roving band of outlaws.
