The State Central Film Museum

Moscow
Pavilion No. 36, 119 Prospekt Mira, Moscow, 129223
Phones: +7 (495) 150-3610
Web site: https://museikino.ru

The Museum’s collection includes 46,300 photos, 15,300 posters, 3,200 books, and 16,000 sketches. There are permanent and temporary exhibits. The permanent memorial exhibition “Sergei Eisenstein’s Study” offers a new way to get to know the great director. The exhibition is based on more than three hundred original items – furniture, personal belongings, textiles, a unique collection of printed graphics and decorative arts from Russia, France, Mexico, and Japan, photographs presented to the director by Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, James Joyce, and others, along with books featuring Eisenstein’s notes. Another permanent exhibition – “A Labyrinth of history” – introduces the main events of the first century of the Russian cinema. The exposition is divided into six complexes: “Attraction” (pre-revolutionary cinema of the 1890s and 1910s), “Experiment” (revolutionary, avant-garde, 1920s), “Triumph and tragedy” (Stalinist cinema and wartime cinema, 1930–40s), “Poetry” (thaw cinema, 1950–60s), “Confession” (intellectual, author’s cinema of the 1970s), and “Protest” (the era of perestroika, 1980s). With the help of modern interactive technology, visitors can immerse themselves in history and feel the atmosphere of the times. Temporary exhibitions are devoted to unique phenomena of cinema – the history of filmstrips, the work of the film chroniclers of the Great Patriotic War, and Soviet-era movie stars.

Director Grigory Boltyansky (1885–1963), one of the founders of Soviet cinema, came up with the idea to create a film museum and a film repository. In the summer of 1925, when he headed the film studio of the State Academy of Art Sciences, he obtained permission to organize a museum. He managed to collect some incredibly valuable materials – the first movie cameras, scripts, sketches, and posters, and to organize more than 25 exhibitions. However, in 1932, the Academy was reorganized, the museum was liquidated, and the collection was lost. In 1947, thanks to director Sergei Eisenstein, the Film History Section was established at the Institute of Art History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in 1948 – the film archive (Gosfilmofond) was set up. But only in the 1960s did the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR begin to build a cinema center on Krasnaya Presnya, where the film museum was to be located. Construction was delayed for many years and the museum was only opened in 1989. It housed repository collections reflecting the film culture of Russia, regular screenings of masterpieces of world cinema, lectures by film critics, and festivals of Russian and foreign cinema. Since the end of 2005, the museum did not have its own premises – the repositories of the Film Museum were located on the territory of the Mosfilm Film Studio, and museum events were held at various venues in Moscow. In 2004–2005, there was a situation when Naum Kleiman decided to leave the premises of the “Cinema Center on Krasnaya Presnya”. Since the end of 2005, the Film Museum’s repositories have been located in the territory of the Mosfilm Film Concern, and movie screenings, exhibitions and other museum events have been held at various venues in the city. In 2017, the Film Museum as given a permanent site in VDNKh pavilion No. 36. There are three cinema halls for showing films, areas for the permanent exposition and thematic exhibitions, lecture halls, a cafe, and a brand store.

The Cinema Center on Krasnaya Presnya was opened with a screening of Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Great Dictator”. In those days, the world was celebrating the centenary of the great artist, and his widow Lady Una gave the museum this gift. In 1991, director Jean-Luc Godard presented the Museum’s Director, Naum Kleiman, with one of the country’s first DOLBY-stereo systems. The 36th pavilion of VDNKh was built in the 1950s for the “Water Management” exhibit, but for most of its existence it was called “Processing Agricultural Products”.