The House on Trubnaya

Director: Boris Barnet

1927 / 91min / DCP

After an accident of overlapping train schedules deposits naïve country girl Paranya in Moscow, solely accompanied by her duck, she winds up pressed into the exploitative services of a nouveau riche hairdresser (the great comic actor Vladimir Fogel in one of his final performances before his untimely 1929 suicide) as a non-union maid. A virtuoso marriage of both avant-garde montage, including freeze frames and reverse motion, and expressionist mise en scène, as exemplified by the ingenious staircase set of the Trubnaya house itself, Barnet’s film constitutes one of the defining classics of the Soviet silent screen.

35mm print courtesy of Filmarchiv Austria

Live piano accompaniment by Makia Matsumura

Part of Boris Barnet A Soviet Poet