Light Industry at Princeton: Mechanics of the Brain (1926) 16mm, dir. V. I. Pudovkin

The year 1926 represents a privileged moment of the young Soviet film industry, with Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Kuleshov, Vertov, Barnet, Room, Kozintsev and Trauberg all represented by important work—and some, including Pudovkin, with more than one. But Mechanics of the Brain, Pudovkin’s first film, was like no other. Interrupted on this project by work on The Mother, his extremely successful first major film narrative, Pudovkin returned later that year to complete his documentary on the theory and practice of Pavlovian reflexology. This film is of especial interest in a number of ways…

For ten years Light Industry has been one of the leading venues for alternative film and electronic art in New York. This fall Light Industry presents at Princeton a selection of highlights from their first decade. The series is curated by Thomas Beard, a founder and director of Light Industry, and organized by Devin Fore (German).