In the museum lie two ancient skulls under the glass.
-What is it? asks the visitor. The guide answers:
- Emperor Nero's skull.
- But why two?
- The one on the left is the skull of Nero before the fire of Rome. And one on the right - after the fire.
So. After “A sentimental journey” and “Letters Not about Love” Shklovsky lived a long time and wrote many adorable books. But no matter how good were the books, written afterwards, these two books are still different from all the others.
Anyway, they show you another Shklovsky. Shklovsky – before the fire of Rome.
From Benedict Sarnov's foreword to Victor Shklovsky's book “Sentimental Journey”, 1990

There were several reasons for the creation of the film club. The initial impulse was received during the screening of Francois Truffaut's 451º Fahrenheit, based on Ray Bradbury's novel of the same name. This view was related to the study in the course "Culture" of the theme "Culture and Civilization". During the discussion took place an exchange of views with students, during which the idea of creating a kind of cinema was formed. which would allow young people to go beyond mass culture and face the film-making.
Cinema club mode: twice a month, on Saturdays, at 12:00. A week before the regular viewing the original poster with the necessary information is posted in the lobby of the university (almost all movie posters are available on the University website). Before the viewing a film begins, viewers receive a 3-4 page brochures with information about the content of the film, director, actors, genre, etc. The main purpose of the film club is to offer students alternatives to mass culture and to promote the formation of aesthetic consciousness based on true cultural values. On this basis, priority is given to European cinema of the XX century. "Author's European cinema, or Art-Cinema, has made out since the mid-40s as a model built around the figure of the director-creator, who solves difficult cultural tasks through cinema just as it does in other elitist cultural practices: literature, contemporary art, classical theater. This was also reflected in the special distribution of production functions, which is characteristic for cinemas in all European countries: it is the director (not the producer like in America) one who is primarily responsible for the film, has the right of final editing; namely the director's name (much more so than the actors, even if they are well known) that becomes a "mark of quality", a trade brand that is significant in dominant cultural institutions and a mark for viewers. It can be said, that with the fixing of the leading figure of the director-author and the design of cinematic canon (Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Tarkovsky ...) the idea of culture in European cinema becomes the idea of "high culture" (Contemporary European Cinema and the Idea of Culture ("the Past") – 2003). This point is dominant, though not absolute, in the selection of films. During the five years of existence of the film club, students had the opportunity to get acquainted with the works of many prominent masters of European filmmaking.
Marcel Carne («Port of Shadows»), Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City), Federico Fellini (Nights of Cabiria), Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless), François Truffo (The 400 Blows and Shoot the Pianist), Sergiy Paradzhanov (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors), Pierre-Paolo Pazolini (Mamma Roma), Andrzej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds), Claude Lelouch (Man and Woman), Alexei Herman ("My Friend Ivan Lapshin ") and others.
In autumn 2007 in the memory of Michelangelo Antonio and Ingmar Bergman was shown a small retrospective of their films. “The Eclipse” and “The Passenger” Antonioni, “Fanny and Alexander” and “Wild Strawberries” Bergman. In addition to the "A Summer’s Tale", which was shown earlier, in 2010, the movie " My Night at Maud's" was shown in memory of Eric Romer.
The second criterion for the selection of films is to acquaint students with the true stars of cinema of the twentieth century, as opposed to modern glamorous fakes:
Anna Magnani, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart, Ivan Mykolaychuk, Julieta Mazina, Ingrid Bergman, Michelle Morgan, Jean Gaben, Roland Bykov, Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Bridget Bardot, Zbigniew Cibulski, Vivien Lee, Toshiro Mifune, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marina Vladi, Yul Brinner, Gerard Philip, Allen Delon, Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Lino Ventura, Charles Bronson, Jean-Louis Trentignan, Oleg Dahl, Gina Lollobrid Jew, Vladimir Vysotsky, Monica Witty, Serge Gensbourg, Alexey Batalov, Romy Schneider.
Very colorful, at first glance, is the geography of American cinema: “Casablanca” by Michael Curtitz, " A Streetcar Named Desire " by Elia Casan, "Waterloo Bridge" by Mervyn Le Roy, "Shanghai Express" by Joseph von Sternberg, "The Young Lions" by Edward Dmitrick, "Carefree" by Mark Sandrich, "Swing Time" by George Stevens, " Zorba The Greek " by Michael Cacoyannis, " The Maltese Falcon " by John Houston, "Citizen Kane" by Orson Wells, "Stagecoach" by John Ford, "The Magnificent Seven" by John Sturges and others. Moreover, in the selection of each film there is a certain motivation.
First of all - the entertainment that is typical of American cinema and necessary to balance the seriousness of European. Secondly, the pointed optimism of the films of the 30's-40's is in demand at any sad time. Further, American cinema gives reason to talk about several genres.
First of all, it is about westerns as America's notable cultural achievement. Furthermore, it is interesting to compare the classic American western and European Spaghetti-Western Sergio Leone ("A Fistful of Dollars "). The appeal to American cinema also allowed us to touch the noir genre ("The Maltese Falcon") in which the loneliness, hopelessness and lack of meaning of being in urban life remain relevant.
One of the meaningful directions of formation of the sense of activity of the film club is the introduction of black and white silent cinema aesthetics. Without this, a huge number of works of world cinema remains not in demand by young people.
An interesting and informative event for students was the association of cultural projects "Gutenbergs Ark" and the film club "Nostalgie" as a part of two reader conferences dedicated to World Book and Copyright Day on April 23.
The first was dedicated to the life and work of Ernest Hemingway: "Hemingway Bridge - a meeting place for generations" - allusion related to the movie “Waterloo Bridge”, which was shown in the film club.
The conference program included presentations and a quiz, partly illustrated by two films previously shown: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro”.
The second reader conference, dedicated to the 110th anniversary of Remarque's birth was entitled “The theme of Courage in the Works of Jack London and Erich-Marie Remarque”. She was accompanied by films “All Quiet on the Western Front” and the “Arch of Triumph”.
More systematic is the selection of films for optional cinema, which covers a wider student audience. For example, the movie series "Six Geniuses of World Cinema" presented an overview of the works of Federico Fellini, Lukino Visconti, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonio, Andrei Tarkovsky and Akira Kurosawa. Each cycle of cinema is accompanied by a lecture on relevant topics.
So we are watching a movie that existed before the cultural fire, which is marked by the euphemism "postmodernism". In the epigraph to the book "3 500. Book of film review" Sergei Kudryavtsev said: "In memory of Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni and the movie that is gone"
P.S. I express my deep gratitude to Boris Timofeev and Lyudmila Magonov.