We are pleased to present The New Babylon with the original Shostakovich symphonic score now synced to film. This energetic avant-garde extravaganza represents a culmination of the experimental Factory of the Eccentric Actor. FEKS may have rejected the old but it knew history-and recognized its collective influences. The story of The New Babylon is set in the 1871 Paris Commune and centers around a posh department store modeled after that found in Emile Zola's novel Au Bonheur des dames, which in turn satirized the circus of consumer fetishism represesented by the Paris emporium Le Bon Marché. All of Paris is galvanized by the Commune but the film focuses on a shopgirl (Alone's Elena Kuzmina) and a heroic young soldier. The extroverted acting style that FEKS developed pushed away feelings (theirs and ours) in a kind of pre-Brechtian carnival of alienation; caricature replaced character. But the inspiration for the photography came from the impressionists-Manet, Degas, Renoir-and there are some magnificent scenes shot in fog, shadow, and moonlight. The rhythms set up from the choreography of shots approach those of ballet in this film that has been called "the danse macabre of the Second Empire and Paris Commune."