This weekend, the Ruya Shop is screening the film Menilmontant (1926) by Dimitri Kirsanoff
The Russian filmmaker Dimitri Kirsanoff emigrated to Paris in the 1920s and became involved in cinema by playing the cello in the orchestra at film screenings. His inexpensive experimental films, made alone without a production company, were important contributions to the French avant garde film movement of the period. Ménilmontant is a silent film and urban thriller set in Paris. A couple is brutally murdered in the working-class district of Ménilmontant. The narrative then follows the lives of their two daughters, both in love with a Parisian thug. The film draws on modernist visual explorations of the city, and turns the viewer into an urban flâneur and a detective.