Exhibition 'The Last Summer of Childhood'

About exhibition

The exhibition celebrates the aesthetics and world of summer holidays. This is one of the favorite backdrops of domestic teen cinema. Images of tent camps, morning exercises, first loves and marching Young Pioneers, as well as final exams, last bells and, of course, the graduation ball — form the basis of nostalgia not only for those whose childhood fell in the 1970s–1980s, but also for modern generations who romanticize the Soviet past. After all, longing for naive carefreeness is familiar to anyone who has once and forever said goodbye to their own 'last summer of childhood'. Visitors will be presented with materials related to the films One Hundred Days After Childhood (dir. Sergey Solovyov, 1975), You Couldn't Even Dream It... (dir. Ilya Frez, 1980), Welcome, or No Trespassing! (dir. Elem Klimov, 1964) and others. Among the exhibits are costume and set sketches, film fragments, posters, behind-the-scenes photographs and memorial items. Visually recreating the atmosphere of a children's pioneer camp, the exhibition tells the story of the phenomenon of children's and teen cinema and how schoolchildren and their problems were depicted in Soviet films. The exhibition actively engages museum visitors. Here you can tap a real pioneer drum, send a kite flying over a field, step onto the scales in the infirmary — just like the film characters did. Learn the basic steps of the waltz to the music from One Hundred Days After Childhood. Each room of the exhibition is styled as a stage of growing up. From the first halls, filled with light, laughter and the clatter of spoons in the dining hall, the route slowly leads into more intimate and quiet spaces — rooms for reflection and first romances. At the end, the visitor will hear the familiar strains of the school waltz, sending teenagers off into adult life.