Metrograph

Barnet’s first film shot in the Sovcolor process is unsurprisingly one of his most visually glorious works, a lyrical musical comedy that unfurls an idyllic, Bruegel-esque canvas of collective farming in the Ukrainian countryside. Upon seeing Bountiful Summer, an enraptured Jacques Rivette proclaimed, “Eisenstein apart... Barnet must be considered the best Soviet filmmaker.” While the film’s narrative, surrounding petty romantic and productive rivalries on the kolkhoz, strikes all the obligatory state propagandistic notes, as Rivette argued, “Barnet’s outlook on the world, on the Soviet universe, is one of innocence, but not of an innocent.”

35mm print courtesy of Austrian Filmmuseum

One screening only!

Introduction by The Theater of the Matters on Saturday, April 4th