The Poster House in Manhattan has an exhibit on the film posters of the early Soviet Union, mostly from the 1920s, the years following the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The posters themselves were experimental works of art every bit as much as the films they were promoting—many of the same innovative techniques used in the films were also used in the posters. The exhibit does a great job of illustrating that. The images themselves are fantastic, colorful, futuristic in the best sense (i.e., not in a reddit Elon Musk sense) and visitors will get a great appreciation for the creativity of the early Soviet Union. However, the overall framing of the exhibit is sinister bourgeois propaganda at its worst (which, since this is an art exhibit in money-makin Manhattan, shouldn’t be too much of a surprise).
It took me a while to get to this article, but I'm thankful I saved it in my e-mails.
Now's a perfect time to get into Soviet films, too, since MosFilm started posting movies for free on youtube, subtitled and in high definition.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Mosfilm_eng/featured
Really interesting piece. I like the reference to Chinatown, that is an poignant observation.