Esfir Shub (1894-1959)
Esfir Shub was a film editor and director who pioneered the “compilation film,” repurposing old, disparate footage into new films.
She was born in the Chernigovsky District of the Ukraine on March 3, 1894. As a student, she later moved to Moscow where she found herself as part of the artistic avant-garde of the city. It was there that she first turned her ambitions toward film.
In 1922, she was hired by the Commissariat of Enlightenment to re-edit and re-title Hollywood films to make them ideologically “suitable” for Soviet audiences. Her first work was on Charlie Chaplin’s A Burlesque on Carmen (1915).
Shub eventually moved on to making original films, collaborating with director Sergei Eisenstein on the shooting script of Strike (1925) and The Battleship Potemkin (1925).
Shub was inspired by the early work of Dziga Vertov and the style of montage he had developed. Shub would later expand on Vertov’s technique of combining unrelated images to express cogent ideas to create the “compilation film.”
"She brought to [the compilation film] genre far more than her speed, industry, and flair; she brought a positive genius for using all sorts of ill-considered odd bits of old footage as a painter uses his palette, using them as if they had all been especially shot for her." -- International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers
In 1927, after three years spent researching and sourcing footage, Shub made The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, a landmark in compilation filmmaking. The documentary pulled from newsreels, Tsar Nicholas II's personal film collection, footage shot by official imperial cinematographers and family friends, films of wartime cameramen, and even footage sourced and purchased from the United States. She made the film as a visual historical record of the Russian Revolution.
That same year she made The Great Way (1927), another compilation documentary drawing on newsreels and other found footage. This film is notable as it includes intimate scenes of Lenin not previously seen by Soviet audiences. It also features many of Shub’s trademark techniques, including the use of documents, newspapers, and statues to anchor or contextualize the scenes of found footage.
Despite her obvious skill as a filmmaker, Shub fell out of favour as Stalinism began to mature in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, she worked exclusively as editor, only able to describe her unmade films in the pages of her memoirs.
Shub died in Moscow on September 21, 1959.
Sources
She was born in the Chernigovsky District of the Ukraine on March 3, 1894. As a student, she later moved to Moscow where she found herself as part of the artistic avant-garde of the city. It was there that she first turned her ambitions toward film.
In 1922, she was hired by the Commissariat of Enlightenment to re-edit and re-title Hollywood films to make them ideologically “suitable” for Soviet audiences. Her first work was on Charlie Chaplin’s A Burlesque on Carmen (1915).
Shub eventually moved on to making original films, collaborating with director Sergei Eisenstein on the shooting script of Strike (1925) and The Battleship Potemkin (1925).
Shub was inspired by the early work of Dziga Vertov and the style of montage he had developed. Shub would later expand on Vertov’s technique of combining unrelated images to express cogent ideas to create the “compilation film.”
"She brought to [the compilation film] genre far more than her speed, industry, and flair; she brought a positive genius for using all sorts of ill-considered odd bits of old footage as a painter uses his palette, using them as if they had all been especially shot for her." -- International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers
In 1927, after three years spent researching and sourcing footage, Shub made The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, a landmark in compilation filmmaking. The documentary pulled from newsreels, Tsar Nicholas II's personal film collection, footage shot by official imperial cinematographers and family friends, films of wartime cameramen, and even footage sourced and purchased from the United States. She made the film as a visual historical record of the Russian Revolution.
That same year she made The Great Way (1927), another compilation documentary drawing on newsreels and other found footage. This film is notable as it includes intimate scenes of Lenin not previously seen by Soviet audiences. It also features many of Shub’s trademark techniques, including the use of documents, newspapers, and statues to anchor or contextualize the scenes of found footage.
Despite her obvious skill as a filmmaker, Shub fell out of favour as Stalinism began to mature in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, she worked exclusively as editor, only able to describe her unmade films in the pages of her memoirs.
Shub died in Moscow on September 21, 1959.
Sources
ESSENTIAL FILMOGRAPHY
1927 – The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
1927 – The Great Way
1927 – The Russia of Nicholas ll and Lev Tolstoy
1927 – The Great Way
1927 – The Russia of Nicholas ll and Lev Tolstoy