Conférence sur Jean Painlevé / Sergei Eisenstein

1929-1932: Eisenstein and Painlevé. A Correspondence for the Future

Conférence de Marie Rebecchi, Post-Doctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (Paris), dans le cadre du cycle ARCHIVES OF/FOR THE FUTURE - Living Archives of Sergei Eisenstein: Correspondence, Library, Diary

European Network for Cinema and Media Studies
NECS 2015 Conference
Lodz, Pologne

The paper focuses on Sergei M. Eisenstein's and Jean Painlevé's correspondence, kept at the Jean Painlevé archives ("Les Documents cinématographiques", Paris). The meeting between the two directors dates back to Eisenstein's visit to Paris between November 1929 and May 1930. In that period, both the intellectual and personal vicissitudes of Eisenstein intertwine with those of Jean Painlevé, Georges Bataille and the group of anthropologists animating the journal Documents. Shortly after their meeting, Eisenstein and Painlevé form a friendship, as evidenced by correspondence that they maintain during all of Eisenstein's travels throughout the United States, then Mexico (1930-32), until the return of the latter to the Soviet Union. The correspondence between the two allows us to grasp, on the one hand, the influence of Painlevé's scientific documentaries on the anthropological thinking of Eisenstein during the 1930's, and on the other hand, to rethink today Eisenstein's trip to Paris and his exchanges with prominent figures in "heterodox" surrealism who were close to Bataille (Painlevé himself included), as a decisive moment in the intellectual course of the Soviet director. - Marie Rebecchi

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