REALITY

THE 2006 RESTORATION

present

NEW BABYLON

The 2006 centenary full length 2,580 metre reconstruction of New Babylon: Dmitri Shostakovich’spremier work for cinema and the USSR’s first great lost unrecorded sound film, available for 24fpslarge screen Digital Projection to accompany live performances of DSCH edition’s Full CorrectedScore of the composer’s “Music for the Film New Babylon: Opus 18”.

A REALITYFILM restoration, produced by Marek Pytel, the 2006 Shostakovich centenaryreconstruction of Grigorii Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg and The Factory of the Eccentric Actors’ film,New Babylon features 25% (510 metres) more original footage than any print previously availableand is the original version for which Shostakovich’s full score was written. It is available togetherwith specially commissioned and translated full size English language titles, a full script of allreleased versions of the film and present reconstruction, a full published history of New Babylonand its music, plus a timecoded reference DVD with complete music synchronisation guide track.

“ONE OF THE HIGHPOINTS OF SOVIET CINEMA, OF SHOSTAKOVICH’S CAREER AND OF DRAMATIC MUSIC IN GENERAL”

THE 2006 CENTENARY ORIGINAL LENINGRADSYNCHRONISED RESTORATION PRINT

NEW BABYLONTHE FACTORY OF THE ECCENTRIC ACTOR

DIRECTORS - GRIGORII KOZINTSEV, LEONID TRAUBERGCAMERA - ANDREI MOSKVIN

DESIGN - YEVGENI ENEIMUSIC - DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

PRODUCTION - LENINGRADKINO FILM FACTORY USSR 1929

2006 RESTORATIONPRODUCED & DIRECTED

MAREK PYTEL

REEL 1 - GENERAL SALEREEL 2 - HEAD OVER HEELS

REEL 3 - THE SIEGE OF PARISREEL 4 - 18 MARCH 1871

REEL 5 - VERSAILLES AGAINST PARISREEL 6 - THE BARRICADE

REEL 7 - TO THE FIRING SQUADREEL 8 - DEATH

DISTRIBUTION: www.realityfilm.co.uk

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As one of the last great film masterpieces of the Soviet avant-garde and the last of Kozintsev andTrauberg’s FEKS group, New Babylon represents an early climax of the directors’ artistic talents.Made when they were in their mid – 20’s and featuring the notorious avant garde acting school theyhad founded in post revolutionary Leningrad, The Factory of the Eccentric Actor. (whose 1922manifesto ECCENTRISM, may be read by clicking HERE ), New Babylon tells the story of the greatlost historical moment of the 19th century; the failed revolution of the Paris Commune of 1871. To write the music for their film, the directors enlisted the precocious talent of the young DmitriShostakovich, who at the age of 23, had swiftly risen to fame in the Soviet music world with hishighly successful First Symphony (1925) and his opera The Nose (1928. Although known at the time mainly for his concert works, Shostakovich was no stranger to thecinema. As a student he had earned money accompanying silent films at a number of Leningrad’scinemas. He disdained the work, commenting that it “all undermined my health and nerves,” andannoyed by the difficult hours, tyrannical theatre managers, unsympathetic audiences and what hefelt was a cheapening of the art of composition, Shostakovich swore never to work in the cinemaagain. His departure would be short lived, however as he signed onto the New Babylon project onlya few years later and would go on to compose over 30 film scores, spanning his entire career. Shostakovich’s score, completed in less than three weeks, is a masterpiece of contrasts respondingto and interacting with the fast visual and emotional cuts of the film. With its fast cutting anddynamic pace the work had no precedence in the USSR and it was in fact intended to have been theSoviet Union’s first sound film. As a composer, Shostakovich was disturbed by contemporary live film music accompanimentpractices which merely “illustrated the frame” and called these ‘the most absolute garbage”.Together with Kozintsev and Trauberg, Shostakovich instead intended to link the music to the inneractions and emotion of the film.

NEW BABYLON IN PERFORMANCE

New Babylon was to open on 18 March 1929 but, though the directors began work in February 1928,Shostakovich only signed the contract on 28 December, leaving less than eleven weeks to write a90-minute score. Adding to the pressure, he was simultaneously scoring for Meyerhold’s Moscowstaging of Mayakovsky’s Bedbug, as well as teaching in Leningrad and preparing a concert – and allthis while suffering a severe bout of flu. Commuting between the two cities, Shostakovich wrote 23items for the play and, after watching the film twice and timing each scene, delivered the piano score(Trauberg claims) after only two weeks. However long it took, Shostakovich was well-paid: 2,000roubles was around 15 months average worker’s salary.In a speech published just one week before the film’s premiere, Shostakovich described hisapproach to the music for New Babylon. His two principal techniques were “the principal ofobligatory illustration,” and the “principle of contrasts” . In the former the music reveals the true innermeaning of a scene despite the images we may see on the screen. With the “principle of contrasts”on the other hand, the music is intended specifically to contradict the meaning of the images. Toachieve these effects Shostakovich styles and tunes, distorting, juxtaposing and superimposing -sometimes all at once – according to the development of the film in which the music’s “fundamen-tal aim is to keep to the rhythm and variations of the film, to augment the force of its impact.”Although the completed film had been approved by the Sovkino production cinema board inLeningrad, just one day later the Moscow office ordered it to be re-cut. This beauracratic fiasco tookplace three weeks before the March 18th 1929 scheduled premiere. The director’s obliged and somewould argue, created a tighter and more fast paced film, but Shostakovich’s music did not fare sowell. Between adjusting, editing, shortening the score and the copying of new parts, the music, asShostakovich and the directors had originally intended, did not make the transition successfully.There were only a handful of ragged performances with Shostakovich’s score, after which it wasabandoned and seemingly lost. The film was subsequently re-cut again for export, and now exists inthree versions - each incomplete - at archives around the world.

Since the mid 1970’s when a manuscript of Shostakovich’s score was made available to the westseveral efforts have been made to reconcile the film and the complete score. Given the differentversions of the film in circulation this has proven to be a thorny task, made more complex still by thefact that at least two different manuscript versions of the score also circulate, neither of themcomplete. The 2006 centenary reconstruction of New Babylon restores all originally cut filmic materials andprojects the film at its intended constant sound speed of 24 frames per second, for which the musicwas scored. It is intended for performance with the DSCH 2004 critical edition of the full score ascomposed by Shostakovich before the last minute re-edit of the film. This full arrangement was never publicly performed by the full thirty piece orchestra whichShostakovich intended. Th composer at the piano, however himself performed it at two previewscreening performances which took place on the 20th and 21st of February 1929, three weeksbefore the premiere - a chaotic and controversial event which brought about the film’s swiftdisappearance from the screen and its loss to world cinema for over 78 years, in its original form. The centenary restoration of New Babylon was premiered on January 26th and 27th 2007 by theUniversity of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at the University of Chicago, under the baton of BarbaraSchubert, Senior Lecturer in Music, Director of the University of Chicago Performance Program andMusic Director and Conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra and New Music Ensemble. In2001 Schubert was Resident Conductor of the Contemporary Chamber Players. She is a PastPresident of the Conductor's Guild and a former Assistant Conductor of the Colorado Symphony.Winner of the 1982 American Conductors Competition, she also serves as Music Director andConductor of the DuPage Symphony and of the Park Ridge Fine Arts Symphony Orchestra. In 2003she was honoured by the Illinois Council of Orchestras as "Conductor of the Year".

For much of its history, New Babylon has been a forgotten film. It was the last production of GrigoriiKozintev and Leonid Trauberg's "Factory of the Eccentric Actor", and due to a disastrous premiere itwas also their first major box office failure.Dismissed as “Formalist” even by its own directors, for many years the film was known abroad onlythrough its shortest version - a European and USA export edit of approx 1900 metres - withoutShostakovich''s score which had never been recorded. It was only in 1975, shortly after thecomposer's death, that the Gosfilmofond archive in Moscow released a more complete print of 2070metres, with original titles and it was this version which has subsequently been presented across theworld with live orchestras performing Shostakovich's original score composed for it.However, recent research has highlighted the problems of restoring the film to its original form andsynchronisation. This has been caused by the fact that only three weeks before its original premiere,and after Shostakovich's music had been completed, the film was extensively re-cut by orders of thehead office of the Moscow Sovkino film production factory - after it had been passed (the previousday) by the organisation's Leningrad office.In what turned out to be the only accurate performances the film ever received, the composerhimself played the piano score to the film at two preview screenings.In all, at the last minute, 510 metres of the original 2580 metres of film were discarded: 178 shotsout of the original 1349: In Total: 24% was cut from Reel 1. 22% from Reel 2. 36% cut from Reel 3,15% of Reel 4 was re-cut. 7% cut from reel 5 and 13% cut from Reel 8. Many shots were also movedwithin the film. Attempts were made to re-edit the music to match, but were unsuccessful. A widelyreported comment in the visitor’s book at one cinema accused the conductor “of being drunk tonight”.

THE RESTORATION

The musicians responded by claiming that Shostakovich knew nothing about music, the composercountered that the orchestra deliberately played badly so as to sabotage the score because they werenot receiving arrangement fees. The music as a result was abandoned, the film was accompanied bystock tunes and the score lay “lost” for over fifty years. The 2006 centenary full size english language reconstruction of New Babylon has been restoredusing digital transfers of material from two incomplete prints: One, 2070 metres, widely available through the Gosfilmofond archives in Moscow and generallyassumed to be the complete film -distributed in Europe for over twenty years by Contemporary FilmsLondon. The second, a unique 35mm German language print of 2050 metres kindly made available by theCinematheque Suisse who, through a stroke of remarkable good fortune rare in film history, havepreserved their highly inflammable nitrate copy of the complete film before its re-edit, includingnearly all the footage cut just three weeks before the film’s scheduled premiere, which had beenexported from the USSR for German distribution in early 1929, and retitled "Der Kampf um Paris".The restoration work involved the re-editing of these materials to their original order and compositionso as to synchronise more accurately with the film's scores. Of these there also existed at least twoversions - neither of which readily matched the Gosfilmofond or the Cinematheque Suisse originalincomplete prints. New full size English language inter-titles, translated from the Russian and Germanof the originals, were designed in Berthold Block font to match the visual tone of the original Cyrillic. Lost permanently however is the original ending to the film - for which music was also written andsome of which has survived.Fortunately, a script extract of this missing finale was published in the December 1929 issue of theSoviet film journal Sovetskii Ekran and enables us to understand how Kozintsev, Trauberg andShostakovich originally intended their film to finish.

Contents Copyright 2007: Marek Pytel, Peter Kupfer, John Riley

REALITYFILMMarek Pytel is the author of "New Babylon" Trauberg, Kozintsev, Shostakovich" (London 1999). Hepublished and translated the Factory of the Eccentric Actor's 1922 Manifesto "Eccentrism" and hasrestored Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1928 masterpiece "Storm Over Asia" with live music by Tuvan throatmusicians Yat-Kha which has been presented on the UK's prestigious Filmfour television channel.His most recent work has been the restoration of Shostakovich's first and unrecorded work forcinema in its original and unreleased form.

Studying at the Slade School of Art, London in the mid 1970's, Pytel was responsible for introducingNew Babylon 's veteran director Leonid Trauberg to the west and presenting the 1978 Londonpremiere of the film and its Shostakovich score in association with the National Film Theatre. MarekPytel’s premiere Realityfilm production, the original production of Jean Luc Godard’s “Alphaville” waspresented at London's IMAX screen in 2000, remixed by electronic music artists incorporating thesampled bilingual dialogue and effects of the original film.

Since then, working uniquely for the big screen, Pytel has produced longform video for the AphexTwin, worked with master drummer and Miles Davis sideman Jack Dejohnette on the "Tribute To TheBoxer Jack Johnson", toured with his live stereoscopic 3D production of 50’s cult movie “It Camefrom Outer Space” as well as producing regular shows at the Barbican, London’s Royal Festival Halland the National Film Theatre. His shows have featured outsider artists as diverse as Billy Childish,award winning Tuvan throat singers Yat-Kha, Cleveland punks Pere Ubu, and the outlandish pop artvision of William Klein's "Mister Freedom" performed live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall London by JimiTenor and his Scandinavian Big Band. The Reality production of Hans Richter's 1945 surrealistdetective drama “Dreams That Money Can Buy” performed by the Real Tuesday Weld waspresented live at the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern in May 2006.

NEW BABYLONGRIGORII KOZINTSEV LEONID TRAUBERG

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHTHE FACTORY OF THE ECCENTRIC ACTOR

SOVKINO, LENINGRAD USSR 1929

THE 2006 CENTENARY ORIGINAL LENINGRADSYNCHRONISED RESTORATION PRINT

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