Learning Film Group
(founded 2008) is a changing constellation of artists, activists, and intellectuals based in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.
It uses film much like Bertold Brecht used the “learning play,” as a platform for self-education and militant investigation. The initial group included artists Evgeny Fiks and Nikolai Oleinikov, as well as historian Ilya Budraitskis, and its first film reenacted the emergency Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party on the eve of 1968. In a second film The Grenelle Agreements, the group, joined this time by David Riff, went on to examine the impact of the 1968 trade union agreements in France with the workers of a Moscow nightclub. Both films have been shown at festivals and exhibition in Moscow and abroad (European Studio, Central House of Artists 2009; Ostalgia, New Museum, New York, 2011; 4th Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art, 2011).
Auditorium Moscow presents a new investigation by Learning Film Group, which has now reformed in Petersburg, in accordance with its policy of changing membership. The new film’s working title is Russian Sounds. A reenactment of Jean-Luc Godard’s British sounds, it is an immanent critique of the small and often desperate activist scene in Russia today. Screenplay, camera, and editing: Sonya Akimova and Max Kulaev (DSPA); Pavel Arsenev, Dina Gatina and Roman Osminkin (Laboratory of Poetic Actionism); Thomas Campbell, Nikolai Oleinikov and Dmitry Vilensky (Chto delat); Oleg Zhuravlev.