PWT 39 2015

transmission 39 contents :

Teodor Bunimovich papers on North Korea, 1947 1-12

weekly transmission n°39 thursday 01 october 2015

early days in north korea

The e-bulletin presents books, albums, photographs and ancient documents as they have beentransmitted to actual owners by their creators and by amateurs from past generations.

The physical descriptions, attributions, origins, place and date of printing of photographs havebeen carefully ascertained by collations and comparisons with comparable samples

The books and photographs are presented in chronological order. It is the privilege of ancientand authentic things to be presented in this fashion, mirroring the flow of ideas and creations.

All the items presented are available at the time of transmission. The prices are denominated ineuro. Paypal is accepted. Priority is given to the first outright purchase, confirmed by email to

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N°39 : A group of printsand documents from Soviet photographer and filmmaker Teodor Zakarovich Bunimovich (1908-2001) archive

RWTransmission 39 1 39th week 2015

teodor bunimovich paperson north korea, including

printed books and posters, manuscriptpoems and one hundred and twentysilver prints, north korea, 1947


a note about the author

Teodor Bunimovitch was born in Tiflis (Tbilissi) in 1908 and had a long life as film operator.He won the Stalin Prize of the first degree in 1942 for participation in the celebrated war doc-umentary Moscow Strikes Back (Разгром немецких войск под Москвой), Razgrom Nemet-skikh Voysk Pod Moskvoy, about the Battle of Moscow made during the battle in October1941 – January 1942, directed by Leonid Varlamov and Ilya Kopalin who recalled of the filmshoot in the winter of 1941–1942 that:

“It's been severe, but happy days. Severe, because we made a movie in a front-line city. Base-ment studio has turned into the apartment where we lived like in casern. At night, we dis-cussed with the cameramen the job for the next day, and in the morning the machine tookaway the cameramen to the front to back in the evening with the footage. The shooting wasvery heavy. There were thirty-degree frosts. The mechanism of the movie camera froze andclogged with snow, numbed hands refused to act. There were times when in the car, whichreturned from the front, lay the body of our dead comrade and broken equipment. But theknowledge that the enemy pulls back from Moscow, that collapses the myth of the invincibilityof the Nazi armies, gave us strength”.

In 1942, the New York Times began its review with the words "Out of the great Winter counter-offensive that began on Dec. 6 of last year on the approaches to Moscow, Russian front-linecameramen have brought a film that will live in the archives of our time. Moscow Strikes Back,now at the Globe, is not a film to be described in ordinary reviewer's terms, for these eventswere not staged before a camera and artistically arranged; they were recorded amidst a strug-gle that knew no quarter. Yet, here is a film to knot the fist and seize the heart with anger, afilm that stings like a slap in the face of complacence, a scourge and lash against the delusionthat there may still be an easy way out. Here is a film to lift the spirit with the courage of apeople who have gone all-out."

The Times reviewer describes the film in detail, admitting that words are inadequate, and addsthat "The savagery of that retreat is a spectacle to stun the mind." He finds "infinitely more ter-rible" the sight of the atrocities, "the naked and slaughtered children stretched out in ghastlyrows, the youths dangling limply in the cold from gallows that were rickety, but strongenough."[2] The review concludes that "To say that Moscow Strikes Back is a great film is tofall into inappropriate cliché." Slavko Vorkapich's editing is described as brilliant; AlbertMaltz's writing as terse, Robinson's voice-over as moving, "but that does not tell the story ofwhat the heroic cameramen have done", filming "amid the fury of battle"


the 1947 north korea movie

Teodor Bunimovitch was sent by Stalin in 1947 to produce a movie on Kim-Il-Sum and theelections which were supposed to happen, just before the war broke.


Теодор Захарович Бунимов́ич (1908—2001). Ode to Kim-Il-Sum, russian

translation, c. 1947. Manuscript leaf, 435x320 mm, handwritten by Bunimovich.



Теодор Захарович Бунимов́ич (1908-2001). Manifestation in Pyong-Yang,

1947. Vintage silver print, 180x240 mm. The reproduction in the book published two yearslater has been significately altered and transformed.














Number Thirty-nine of the Weekly Transmission has been uploaded on Thursday, 1st October at 15:15 (Paris time).

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Documents

PWT 39 2015