Outreach

The database has opened quite recently. We do not know exactly how many people have found it helpful for their studies and research or just interesting. However, we do know that the database materials had been of help to scholars even before we opened the website. For example, in the fall of 2022, Peter Bagrov of the George Eastman Museum received a request from the Cineteca di Bologna archive in Italy. In this archive, there was a print with an unknown early film that seemed Russian. Although Peter Bagrov is an excellent expert on early Russian and Soviet cinema, he could not identify the frames. He contacted our team, and we were able to find similar images in the database; the Cineteca di Bologna frame (fig. 7) turned out to be very similar to the promotional still for The Adventures of Shpeyer and his “Jacks of Hearts” Gang (Pokhozhdeniya Shpeyyera i yego shayki “chervonnykh valetov; 1915, directed by Evgeni Bauer; fig. 8). Since Bauer is known as the major film director of pre-revolutionary cinema, this discovery is very significant not only for archivists and scholars but also for everyone interested in the history of early cinema.

The database materials were useful for a recent film restoration project. Two pre-Soviet films from the Šiaulių „Aušros“ muziejus in Lithuania, Evgenii Bauer’s “high style” melodrama Human Abysses (Chelovecheskie bezdny; 1916) and Mikhail Bonch-Tomashevskii’s circus drama Daniel Rok were reconstructed and restored by the George Eastman Museum several weeks ago. Both prints have survived in parts, and it was necessary to reconstruct the plots to create intertitles. Librettos from our database were very helpful for this exciting project.

Human Abysses and The Adventures of Shpeyer and his “Jacks of Hearts” Gang by Evgeny Bauer were shown at the Cinema Ritrovato film festival in 2024 and 2025.

The database has already been used for research purposes multiple times. Scholars who were involved in the project have used it for their research. For example, Stasya Korotkova analyzes some of the materials in her article Cross-dressing Women in the Cinema of the Russian Empire, 1910-1917. Alexandra Ustiuzhanina and Anna Kovalova wrote an article on feminist screenwriting in the Russian Empire which was also largely based on the database materials (this article will come out in the fall). The database materials have also been used by scholars who did not have access to the website. For example, when Gary D. Rhodes was working on his book Vampires and Silent Cinema, he asked me if I had any information on vampire-related films produced in the Russian Empire. I sent him librettos and images we collected for the database. Some of these materials are now quoted and published in the book with a reference to the database.

The database will help to fill in a lot of gaps in the history of pre-Soviet cinema by bringing together a wide range of sources many of which have remained little known among historians of the period. For instance, in her article “Christmas Cinema in the Russian Empire from the 1900s to the 1910s,” Arina Ranneva attempts to analyze all Christmas-related films produced in the Russian Empire. However, when she gets to Evgeni Bauer’s lost film At Midnight on New Year's Eve (Rovno v polnoch pod Novyi god; 1914), she writes that its plot is unknown because she could not find a libretto. However, later on, the libretto was discovered in the Finnish journal Biograafilehti. This may seem a minor thing; however, in some cases, such discoveries can change the whole picture of the investigated subject.

In addition to being a helpful tool for archivists and scholars, the database may be a useful source for movie lovers around the world. To achieve that, we should work more closely on translations and post video clips, which will be possible if we get the desired funding.