DISGRACED MONUMENTS

DISGRACED MONUMENTS

    Price: $310.00

    Code: 1810

    Directed by Mark Lewis and Laura Mulvey
    1993, color, 48 mins.
    Purchase: $310 | Rental: $125



    In 1918, just a year after the Russian Revolution, Lenin, together with the Minister of Culture, Anatoly Lunacharski, issued a government resolution providing for the erection of monuments honoring revolutionary thinkers such as Marx and Engels, as well as writers, philosophers, scientists and artists. Lenin's plan also prescribed the removal from the squares and streets of all monuments depicting the Tsars and their servants. After Lenin died in 1924, his list of proposed monuments was for the most part ignored in favor of monuments devoted to the new regime's leaders, particularly Lenin himself. Following the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, many of the monuments of Lenin, Stalin and other government leaders were demolished or stored in the "Temporary Museum of Totalitarian Art" in a Moscow park.

    Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with sculptors, art historians, gallery and museum directors, this video examines how monuments connect us with the past, how they are destroyed and new ones raised at times of social cataclysm, and how every turning point in society has begun history anew in a struggle with old monuments.

    Subjects & Collections