By the Law

Three men, one couple, one dog; all searching for gold on the banks of the Yukon, during the gold rush. Everything goes smoothly until one of the men shoots the other two. The couple subdues the murderer and keeps him under constant guard. None can leave, as the ice and snow have begun to melt, flooding the Klondike Fields.

By the Law was the cheapest film ever produced in Russia. It is also an absolute masterpiece, whose greatness stems from minimalism. The minimum amount of effort required for story development, a minimum number of characters, a bare minimum of inter-titles and dialogue. One can label By the Law a formalist action film, a Western psychodrama or an experimental study in bigotry. When it comes to taking artistic styles and genre conventions and playing around with them, Kuleshov remains the master.

Barbara Wurm / Rotterdam IFF

11th New Horizons IFF Catalogue

Lev Kuleshov (1899–1970) – a distinguished filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world’s first film school (the Moscow Film School). He studied art in Moscow. When the Russian revolution began in 1917, he joined the Bolshevik army and covered the war with a documentary crew. Beginning 1943, he served as the academic rector of The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). His students included Sergei Eisenstein and Wsiewołod Pudowkin. Kuleshov may well be the very first film theorist as he was a leader in Soviet montage theory. For him, editing is the essence of cinema – the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov effect.

Katalog 11. MFF Nowe Horyzonty