Exhibition "The Third Strike. On the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Sevastopol"

About exhibition

The exhibition "The Third Strike. On the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Sevastopol" opened at the Museum of Cinema at VDNKh on May 9, 2024. It is timed to Victory Day and is dedicated to the 1948 film by the outstanding director Igor Savchenko, "The Third Strike." The exhibition features editing sheets of front-line cameramen who took part in the liberation of Crimea, the director's shooting script of "The Third Strike," behind-the-scenes photographs from the set, frames and excerpts from the film, as well as a unique poster by Vladimir Stenberg from the Museum of Cinema's collections. The film's title, "The Third Strike," refers to the ideological concept of the so-called "ten strikes," which denoted the major offensive operations carried out by the armed forces of the Soviet Union. It was intended that each military victory would be commemorated by a separate cinematic epic, but only three were actually produced. In addition to Savchenko's "The Third Strike," audiences saw Vladimir Petrov's "The Battle of Stalingrad" and Mikhail Chiaureli's "The Fall of Berlin." In his work, the director Savchenko, representing the younger generation of the Soviet cinematic avant-garde, continued to search for new means of artistic expression, combining techniques of documentary and fiction filmmaking. The shooting of the war drama took place on the Sivash and the Turkish Wall—sites of recent battles. Real military equipment appears on screen, and the film's main dramaturgy focuses not on the inner world of the characters but on detailed reconstructions of commanders' strategic decision-making and the course of military operations.