Michael Craig - Copernicus Films

I filmed some material at the gatehouse of the ruined church monument on Baumanskaya Ulitsa. It will fit well with the animated material I am working on at the moment. I have been calling this small monument in the centre of Moscow the gatehouse but it is in fact a bell tower The Old Belivers' belltower  A dilapidated, neglected and seemingly, in my eyes, a fallen relative of the Ivan the Great Bell tower in the Kremlin. Why it is left in this state I don't know but in some ways I am glad because it retains a broken or ruined character which resists and persists through the centuries and time. It remains only what it is, nothing more and nothing less, an old weathered survivor form past times, from the times of the old believers in Russia with whom it is associated.  Of course it doesn't look like the Ivan the Great Bell Tower but there is in my mind a closeness or imagined kinship between the two  towers. The pomp and power of the white bell towe...

A good day - I have  got  to grips with editing the first part of  The Fairground Booth   film which has been dogging me for some time now. Managed to re edit the script and add in new material to flesh out some of the weak parts of the beginning. It means I should be able to assign the graphics and other material  to where it should go rather than things slipping away from me as I try and make things work.  Working a bit with T's material for his book. He asked me to read the article he wrote for a journal and tell him what I thought about it. Just jotting down some notes now as I go through it. Last night attended a concert and film of a Japanese composer  Yonekawa Toshiko I , who played and composed for the Koto. Magnificent musician, full of sensitivity and richness of expression, tasteful and emotional. Her daughter is now leading the ensemble which played for us at the Moscow conservatory last night. It is a warm up for the bigger co...

Work on The Fairground Booth film proceeding well: My intention is to start a journal which will chronicle the progress of the actual process of editing and producing the film. Blok's aim in writing   The Fairground Booth  is to liberate us from whatever trust may have been placed in traditional theatrical practice. Part of this process involves another form of understanding.  The Fairground Booth  therefore has a visuality or pictorial sense in its graphic unworded movement. Blok wants us to see that out of the chaos emerges a new form or sense of order through the theatrical. The author is introduced  not as a god like creator but as fallible and weak. For Blok, the Cosmos as a subject underpins the apocalypse - as in the fall of the stars and the heavens crashing to earth. The very multilayeredness of themes invokes and multiplies new themes, direction,openings and expansions.

The Russian Theatre Film Series book - published and available: It’s difficult to find an appropriate description of the book "The Russian Theatre Film Series". Essentially it is an account of an arts documentary series with all its pitfalls, successes, limitations and achievements. The three films which have so far been completed are " Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde ", " Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre " and " Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre ". This book is part of the overall project - The Russian Theatre Film Series and is a milestone and a marker in this developing project. It is also a commentary on what it means to make an independent arts documentary film series in a foreign country namely Russia. Not so much from the technical point of view although there is plenty of technical aspects covered but more from the point of view of a kind of interior process. It is an expedition into the phenomenology of film-m...

As I come to the end of  The Russian Theatre Film Series   book already new horizons opening up. Yesterday completed the artwork fro the cover, so all that remains is to proof read the book one more time and check everything over for layouts and other things. I have been tantalizingly speaking to a publisher but still feel I should work at my own pace and within my own resources although it is always worth exploring all the publishing outlets which might be available. Already there are ideas percolating through with regard to  The Fairground Booth book and beyond. As always it is too early to write about this as the ideas themselves are appearing more as clues to developing work. One idea is to do another book about the theatre but only biomechanics. To make it more as an illustrated book with pictures but also text. The black and white tones will make I believe a very good visual impact. Working on this tonight - fleshing out a broad plan and outline with possible...

Front cover for the book "The Russian Theatre Film Series" Cover completed for the Russian Theatre Film series book. A large step forward as I was worried about how it might look. In the end I only spent 3 - 4 hours putting it together ready for printing.  The book weaves together the experiences of filming in Moscow and Russia on The Russian Theatre Film Series. How it came together, who were the main characters involved in the series and charts the pitfalls, the struggles and the joys of making independent films in a foreign country in this case Russia, Moscow.  Often I am asked how do you begin to make a film, where do you start. For many it is easy, you start and that's it. For others that first step seems like a mountain standing before them. This book attempts to answer some of those questions by re living the steps which it took to make this series. Not necessarily step by step but the book certainly travels a distance that most independent film makers ha...

The first public screening of  the film " Tokyo Journey " took place in Moscow on the 25th January 2017. It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I approached the screening partly because the film is not exactly standard fare and the audience was made up of mostly people involved in teaching and disseminating traditional Japanese culture and Japanese Culture in general.

In an article by James David Jacobs about Shakespeare and music he writes "The Tempest stands at the crossroads of theatrical history: between the Renaissance and the Baroque, between the Elizabethan theatre of the imagination and the Jacobean spectacle, between the primacy of the word and the primacy of sensory entertainment". Similarly The Fairground Booth was written and performed at the threshold of a new epoch in 1906 in Russia. The common link between these plays is music. It's no coincidence that at the same time these upheavals were taking place in England, the art form known as opera was being born in Italy (the first operatic masterpiece, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, was premiered in 1607.) And it is not an accident that  The Fairground Booth  appeared at the junction between two epochs and the beginning of what we understand as the modern era.

Showing this short film to a live audience tomorrow in Moscow. Never expected to present it as such so a bit nervous how it will be received. Was at the venue today checking things out. Good sound - which is welcome as the soundtrack is important. The film was shot in Tokyo and since it has been released on You-tube I have re evaluated the film and re edited it slightly for this particular presentation due to the specifics of the presentation. I will blog about that later with pictures and possibly a video clip of the event. I have been worrying about it for several weeks now mostly about how I would present the film to the audience but all those problems seem to have been solved. The work that I put into this video is now starting to pay dividends in terms of new projects and ideas for films. All the practical experience on this film portended  a completely  new direction. Have also been working on much of the writing. The next book about the Russian theatre   is in the ...

"Encounters with the Russian Avant-garde" is a book by Michael Craig which complements the series of six films made by Michael Craig and Copernicus Films about the Russian Avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s.  Click on link to purchase book:  http://ow.ly/Xxvl305ChZc Fully illustrated including stills from most of the films, it is not only an account or explanation but also an introduction or to be more specific an "encounter" with this exciting phenomenon. The title reflects an active relationship: firstly through the experience of living in Moscow for many years, plus a direct encounter with the buildings, the architecture and the very territory in which much of the avant-garde arose and to some extent still exists. Encounter suggests something more casual, unexpected and unstructured but also a sense of living in the avant-garde and being part of it. After all it was the intention of the Russian Avant-garde to connect with the real lived world and to ‘take art out ...

Dostoevsky and The Fairground Booth Posted on   October 13, 2016   by   michaelcraig Planning an extra chapter about Dostoevsky and the Fairground Booth in the book  Blok, Meyerhold and the Fairground Booth   thefairgroundbooth.com . Its come about due to further research into the symbolist painters of the time who were involved with theatre set design and theatre in general in Russia and Europe: Benois, Somov,Golovin and more particularly Dobuzhinsky. He designed sets for  The Devil’s Play,  and an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s  The Devils . Dobuzhinsky also designed the frontispiece for Blok and Meyerhold’s play  The Fairground Booth. Dobuzhinsky’s illustration for the set of “The Devil’s Play” This chapter and section will give an extra depth to the discussion about The Fairground Booth. It will also serve one of my intention which is to put the play in the wider context of Russian and European literature. Attached are the frontispiece for...

This post is a fragment from a chapter of the book which will be published some time next year. The context is a comparison between the ballet "Petrushka" and "The Fairground Booth". Both share roots in the Russian fairground and the figures of the commedia dell'arte. To understand a play like The Fairground Booth which has no plot, no characters, no real sense of forward movement or natural time and broke from the traditions of realism and naturalism, requires an approach to Russian culture which moves beyond its surface reflections. When, as Bakhtin states, Dostoevsky's work embodies elements of carnival, (something which is not immediately associated with Dostoevsky), then it becomes clear why it is possible to find clues to the meaning of "The Fairground Booth" in works of literature as various as "The Brothers Karamazov" and The ballet "Petrushka" and vise a versa. For those seeking unadulterated cultural forms this approac...

As the post production  film Vakhtangov and the Russian theatre comes to an end ( just some tidying up to do in various technical questions) other projects are already heaving into view. This is a mixture of new work and old which have been left to one side while the Vakhtangov film gets finished. Strangely tired after such a marathon trek with Vakhtangov starting from initial research and development, writing of the script filming, securing archive footage and finally post production. However keen to get on with the work that has been waiting - books and films and feeling surprisingly fresh on this score

Several days back from the UK after a successful screening and Premiere of  Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre.  It took place on May 10th 2014 as part of the Vakhtangov study day at the Rose Bruford college of theatre and performance organised by The Stanislavsky Centre which is based at the centre. It was a privilege to be able to participate in the and share the podium with the Vakhtangov scholar and specialist  Andrei Malaev Babe l who has written two books about Vakhtangov ‘ The Vakhtangov Sourcebook” and “Evgeny Vakhtangov – A Critical Portrait” . Also  Graham Dixon of the Mikhail Chekhov Studio  in the morning session which he participated in together with Andrie Malaev Babel The morning session was dived into three parts. A long introduction presented jointly by Andrie and Graham, then the film Vakhtangov and the Russian Avant-garde which I briefly introduced and then a question and answer session with Andrie Malaev Babel, Graham Dixon and myself.

Coming to the end of another Moscow evening. Long nights drawing out so that it stays light almost to eleven. Some good work today on the new film Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre   . Really just in the early stages of pre production, script writing, collecting research materials etc but things starting to take on a rough shape. Over the weekend met with Slava who was the camera operator on two of the films in my series about the Russian Avant-garde - "Mayakovsky" and "Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde" in the Scandinavian restaurant. Restuarant which harks back to the mid 1990s but still maintains its allure as a meeting place for foreigners. One of its attractions is the beautiful shaded courtyard. This photo of Scandinavia is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Working on the script for  Vakhtangov film - going through the script step by step to bring together a full draft. Also thinking about widening the short pieces I have been doing called "Chekhov Country" which is a a kind of side project which takes in the process of actually making the films - going around different locations and filming short episodes which will feed into the whole series - kind of like additional information about Russian theatre from that period. Chekhov Country is a not essentially about Chekhov ( although a lot of it will involve Chekhov) but more about the theatre world of Russia. I would hope to give more of a simple flavour of the atmosphere and aura of Russia and its relationship to theatre and acting. When making a film there is a lot of stuff on the periphery which doesn't go into the film but all the same is there and has a validity, its part of the overall macrocosm which exists around a subject or topic. Therefore it is hard to isolate a...