Abstract: The recent spike in interest among film scholars in archival film and the gradual restoration and reclamation of lost film in Russia, are changing the understanding of history of the Soviet film industry. One film, recently restored after more than 40 years of obscurity, illustrates particularly well the creative strategies Soviet directors used to produce formally and aesthetically complex work within the state-run film industry. The 1967 experimental film Pervorossiiane[1] is truly remarkable for its ambition, but remains unknown in the West. This paper builds on the recently published archival materials in connection with the film and engages in aesthetic analysis to forge a new direction for conceptualizing experimental work in Soviet cinema.

Pervorossiiane is highly demanding of the viewer. Set in four dominant colors – red, black, white and gold – color is used in the film to create dramatic effect through carefully orchestrated and evocative color blocking. Shot at the Soviet Lenfilm studio, Pervorossiiane is a drama of the hope and failure of one of the early Soviet agricultural communes. The film has a minimal plot, with much of the dramatic action translated into manipulations of color and composition. The spare composition and static quality of the shots in Pervorossiiane rejects “reality” and foregrounds materiality and construction, clearly recalling the Soviet modernist and constructivist visual culture of the 1920s. Building on the modernist aesthetic with cutting edge technology, the film was shot in a 70mm wide-gauge (extra large) format, especially fashionable at the time for popular films. In Pervorossiiane  the creative team exploited the immersive potential of the fad format to deepen the emphasis on perception. In analyzing the film’s formal features, it is my contention that in an atmosphere of limited narrative variability of Soviet cinema, perceptual play became the central aesthetic strategy of the film’s creative team.