From 15 November 2019 to 27 January 2020, the noble floor of the Swabian Castle of Bari will host the exhibition Russian cinema through its posters. 1920s - 1980s, a selection of posters and preparatory sketches of vintage film posters, distributed in Russia from the 1920s to the 1980s and from the collection of Galleria56 in Bologna, the largest in Italy to keep this type of documentation on Russian production. The selection on display in Bari includes over sixty films, some of which are very well known to the international public and among which the Italians Bellissima and Roma città open with Anna Magnani and Una vita difficile with Alberto Sordi, but also Guerra e Pace with L. Savyoleva, Ivan the Terrible with M. Zharov, Annicka with G. Grogoriu.

Beyond the titles, which reveal in their composition the communicative immediacy of Russian cinema, the interest is focused on advertising graphics, very stringent on the contents, substantially neorealistic but with significant exceptions to the descriptive synthesis and more modern interpretation, to as we get closer to the 80s.

The authors present are among the most significant of Russian advertising graphics: from Jakov Ruklevskij with Rome city open to Boris Zelenskij for Bellissima, from Evgenij Grebenshikov with War and Peace and Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Kononov (Otello), from Michail Chazanoskij (Romeo and Juliet, Sacco and Vanzetti, A difficult life) to Vasilij Ostrovskij (The little prince).

It is a vast repertoire of images, sometimes less known, to which the memory of Russian cinema was given in the era of its nationalization and which therefore tells of its choices and interpretations. It is a documentation of great value since most of it consists of pre-press preparatory sketches and therefore original works by the authors, while some posters are first lithographic prints of the period.