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Record of War (15)

Cinema Restored

Record of War

Courtesy David Tett

A unique dovetailing of two films charting the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–6 from radically opposed viewpoints. 

In this special performance, marking 90 years since the invasion, our projectionists present a live montage from the Fascist Italian Path of the Heroes, and the Soviet Russian film Abyssinia, conjuring a unique third film that only exists for the duration of the programme: Record of War.

One shows what the other conceals; one is full of Futurist bombast while the other shows those on the receiving end of Mussolini’s war machine. Record of War is a form of counter-propaganda, as relevant now as it ever was.

Record of War was first conceived and staged by Gaslight director Thorold Dickinson in December 1937 at London’s storied Film Society, which celebrates its centenary this year. “Our fashionable Sunday audience, with their broad brims and capes and a capacity for chatter drifted out into Regent Street in dead, awed silence,” he wrote. 

Films:

Il Cammino Degli Eroi Italy, 1936, Dir. Corrado D'Errico

Abyssinia Soviet Union, 1936, Dir. Vladimir Yeshurin & Boris Zeitlin

 

With thanks to Henry K. Miller and Brighid Lowe.

£10.40

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