Hello Istanbul!

We are pleased to announce our curatorial collaboration with the 5th Istanbul Experimental Film Festival. We will open both the festival and our year-long joint program Rethinking the Archive with "The History of the Civil War" by Dziga Vertov, one of the pioneers of cinema verite and avant-garde cinema.

Vertov's film, which documents the Russian Civil War that began after the October Revolution, was shown in Moscow in 1921 to an audience of Bolshevik officials. After this first and last screening, the film, which had only one print, disappeared for unknown reasons and existed only on paper for a hundred years.

As a result of two years of archival and reconstruction work by the film historian Nikolai Izvolov, 100 years after its disappearance, the film will meet the public for the first time at the IDFA in 2021.

When Nikolai began his project, the film's footage was scattered, used in other films, and stored in many different archives. By the early 1930s, even Vertov was convinced that a complete print of the documentary no longer existed.

More than 100 years after it was first shown, Chute Film Coop and Istanbul Experimental bring this unique film from the squares of Moscow to Istanbul.
The screening will take place on May 8th at Hope Alkazar with a live performance. We look forward to seeing you there.