Event
THE K EFFECT. STALIN'S EDITOR
The K Effect reveals the curious and amazing story of Maxim - actor instigator of the revolution, forger, Hollywood producer and Stalin's film editor - through his amateur footage and personal home movies. Childhood friend of Eisenstein, Maxim is an actor in 1920 Moscow. Together they will experience the great journey of personal creation through cinema and the collective formation of a new society. It is the journey of all those who dared dreaming and were swollen by their dreams. An adventure into the dawning of cinema and utopias, an historical road movie.Through crossing and meetings that happen throughout Maxim and Sergei's paths of life, we will unfold to which extent the ideals of an historic period have been shaped. All this seen through cinematic perspective. Maxim will reveal piece by piece his certainties and doubts: his missions as Stalin's actor-spy, as forger and Hollywood producer, his involvement in the Great Crash of 1929, Mera's attempted murder, his efforts to obtain the 'heavy water of Hitler during WWII, a betraying report about Eisenstein during the shooting of '""Qu? Viva Mexico!', his two families - Russian and American - and his greatest success: obtaining the plans for the construction of the atomic bomb from the Americans in 1947 in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Maxim epically managed to escape from the FBI with a light aircraft traveling across the coast of Canada, Alaska and the North Pole up to Siberia. Stalin awarded him with the Order of Lenin, and then made him his film editor. In 1952, after his controversial film 'The K Effect' was released, he was immediately deported to the Gulag in Kolyma and disappeared. In 2011 his reels were found in Kazakhstan. The K Effect is a journey through some of the most important events of the 20th century: a century shaken by fascinating utopias, which spawned cheerful dreams and horrible nightmares. A fiction movie made with fragments of reality, an historical documentary made by mingling fictional elements. Lights and shadows: the great metaphor of cinema. The K Effect is an exploration of new narrative languages that border reality, fiction and dream which will thrill the sensitive eye. It will open a window to the spectator, allowing him/her to delve into the mind of some protagonists of History and of the incredible events they lived. The visual approach of the film is based on our personal collection of more than 500 home movies, which cover a lapse of time going from the dawning of cinema, passing through all the phases of image transformation, B&W and color. We will build the inner point of view of Maxim though his subjective narration. We acknowledge his travels form actual historical events, but seen through the eyes of a privileged protagonist. The edition is based on the Kulechov experiment: images contaminate one another, and gain meaning in relation to other images. The truth can be built up, as well as the meaning. It is a t the same time an adventure story, a myth about cinema, the legend of a friendship, a recount of the universal human suffering the myth of an hero and his fall to hell, the story of an actor-spy that eventually said 'no' to Stalin. David versus Goliath. However, The K Effect expresses something more and very different: the creation of a truth from fragments of falseness, fiction created with patches of reality. It spawns a reflection about the memory of events, the oblivion and its later reconstruction. A reflection on how the past dilutes and is substituted by another truth. The K Effect demonstrates that not images contaminate between themselves, as Kulechov demonstrated with his experiment, but also that life itself contaminates images. Time and the viewer will give new meanings, building up new truths. As well as images themselves contaminate life, creating new memories. The original and unique point of view is that this not only happens in cinema but also in society. In the Russian society of the time, a K experiment was carried on, an edition of reality. The K Effect tells how memory, as well as perception of reality, can be modified, betrayed and suppressed. Maxim will face the dilemma of manipulating his own memories and giving a new meaning to the events he lived. Maxim will be a bystander of his personal and collective history, and will take a stand vis-a-vis with Stalin. Stalin, the Cannibal_God, the Great Vulture of Memory, the creator of a vast social K effect. If we want to understand our present, we have to revive and try to look back at history with the innocent ideological look of the past. Maxim will say: 'Today we are the future of the past, the consequences of the cause, the great social K effect, an edition of the facts. But... what if the edition would have been different? Who was the Editor?Comrade Stalin already warned us: 'The past is a weapon loaded with future, and memory... is fragile. THE PAST IS UNPREDICTABLE!'
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LocationBrightside Tavern
141 Bright St
Jersey City, NJ 07302
United States
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| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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