Le Studio Mejrabpom, ou l'Aventure du Cinema Prive au Pays des Bolcheviks (The Mezhrabpom Studio, or the Adventure of Private Cinema in the Land of the Bolsheviks)

Le Studio Mejrabpom, ou l'Aventure du Cinama Prive au Pays des Bolcheviks [The Mezhrabpom Studio, or the Adventure of Private Cinema in the Land of the Bolsheviks] AICHA KHERROUBI & VALERIE POSENER (eds), 1996 Paris, Runion des Musees Nationaux; les Dossiers du Musee d'Orsay, no. 59 pp. 196, FF 150

We are used to the notion of the `studio system' in the history of Hollywood, of UFA in Germany, Gainsborough Films in Britain, or Albatros in France. This book, however, is the first attempt to apply the studio model to the state-run cinema of the former Soviet Union. Its pioneering approach parallels a similarly innovative season of films, illustrating the Mezhrabpom `studio style' at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris in the autumn of 1996.

The name of the studio, Mezhrabpom, is itself an acronym for mezhdunarodnaia rabochaia pomoshch or the Workers' International Relief, established in 1921 on the orders of the Comintern to raise money abroad for famine relief in Soviet Russia. This organisation, with which the brilliant German Communist propagandist Willi Munzenberg was closely associated, provided the first opportunity...