Esfir’ Shub: From Inspiration to Abjection

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, February 19, 2026, at 7pm for Esfir’ Shub: From Inspiration to Abjection, a screening and book presentation with Keith Sanborn.

 

This evening will attempt to reveal something of the trajectory of Esfir’ Shub from Leninist true believer to Stalinist conformist, from innovator in the “non-acted” film to self-effacing hagiographer. The course will be charted via two films, bookending her career: Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) and With Heartfelt Sincerity (1949). The evening will be introduced by Keith Sanborn, who has recently finished the first extensive English translation of Shub's writings: My Life is the Cinema, published by Sticking Place Books. Sanborn will also be available to discuss Shub's work after the screening, when a limited number of copies of the book will be available for purchase.

 

Esfir’ Shub, Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927, 87 minutes)

The film was commissioned to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution. It is one of the first feature length compilation films, that is, a film made from other films. In this case, pre-existing documentary film materials ranging from newsreels to the work of the tsar’s personal cinematographer(s), supplemented by rephotographed paper documents and a biting commentary in its intertitles. It is a panoramic record of the Russian Imperial landscape before, during, and after WWI, culminating in the February bourgeois revolution and the leadup to the October Revolution. Its form of montage is a slow burn, gradually building to finally and inevitably erupt in the mass uprising of the people against the imperial capitalist system. 

 

Esfir’ Shub, With Heartfelt Sincerity (1949, 17 minutes)

A film record of the gifts and gift-givers to comrade Stalin on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1948. The majority of the action takes place in the Halls of Gifts to Comrade Stalin in the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow. Though Shub did not give any credits for this ikon as if not made by human hands, the records of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow and the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive in Krasnogorsk clearly show her participation. Perhaps an offer she couldn’t refuse; in any case, she didn’t.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator nearest to 180 Classon Ave (garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. A ramp is available for steps within the space.
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.