The history of the 20th century according to the magazine “Crocodile” is being prepared for publication.

The large-scale project of Sergei Mostovshchikov and Alexey Yablokov, “History through the eyes of Krokodil,” is an attempt to tell the history of the 20th century through Soviet cartoons and feuilletons of the Krokodil magazine. The editors divided all 70 years of publication, from 1922 to 1992, into four eras, each of which is allocated three volumes - the key “Events”, “People” and “Words” of each period. Also, each volume will be supplemented by a gallery demonstrating end-to-end images of each era in the cartoons of “Crocodile”, for example “Foreign as an image of hell” or “The worker as a new titan”. Accompanying texts will be written by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Vladimir Paperny, Lev Rubinstein and Alena Doletskaya. The first issue of “History Through the Eyes of the Crocodile” will be presented at the non/fiction fair, and the publication of the next ones depends on contributions from volunteers on the crowdfunding site planeta.ru .

An album of Soviet prison tattoos was published in England

“Tattoos of Russian Criminals” is a 250-page album with photographs of retired forensic expert of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Arkady Bronnikov, published in the English publishing house FUEL. Over the course of 30 years of service, Bronnikov took and collected several thousand photographs, each of which has a commentary and transcript, thus creating the most complete study of the language of Soviet prison tattoos. The FUEL publishing house bought part of the collection from Bronnikov and for the first time published 180 photographs along with comments and an article by the criminologist himself about Soviet prison tattoos. Simultaneously with the publication of the book , an exhibition opens in London, at which Bronnikov’s photographs will be presented to the general public for the first time.

An exhibition about children's literature of the Thaw era has opened in Moscow

The Russian State Children's Library has launched the exhibition "Noon, 20th Century: Opening the Pages of Children's Literature of the 1950s and 60s," exploring how, in the conditions of relative freedom of speech that emerged after Stalin's death, Soviet writers, translators, animators and directors tried to tell the next generation about war, repression and a new future. The exhibition will include celebrations dedicated to the lifestyle of dudes and the characters of Tove Jansson, film screenings of Soviet films for teenagers ("Republic of SHKID" and "No Trespassing"), several quests on the exhibition and lectures on the phenomenon of children's literature during the Thaw. Also in the exhibition space there is an interactive zone that recreates the urban and rural landscape of the USSR in the 1950s and 60s, where you can walk, see the interiors of Khrushchev buildings, learn about the life of Soviet schoolchildren and the adventures of the main children's characters in Soviet literature.

Marina Abramovic invited Lars von Trier to make a film together

The artist recorded a video message in which she invited the Danish director to team up and make a joint film “Seven Deaths”. Abramovich has been working on the idea for this film for a long time - the film will be dedicated to seven heroines of classical operas who suddenly die. Having publicly invited Lars von Trier to direct a film together, Abramovic also confessed her love for his past works and expressed admiration for his directing method: “You drive the actors to a nervous breakdown. I, as a performance artist, really approve of that.”

Joe Dante to Direct Vampire Version of Romeo and Juliet

Photo: WireImage/Getty Images/Fotobank.com

The American director will direct the romantic thriller “Shadow of Love,” a loose adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet.” Like Shakespeare, the families of lovers are at odds, but for different reasons: the family of the new Juliet belongs to the clan of vampires, and Romeo’s relatives belong to werewolves. In addition to the centuries-old clan feud, the love of the main characters is also hampered by the economic crisis in modern Italy: Juliet’s aristocratic family was ruined by the financial corporation of the Romeo family, which makes the conflict between the houses even deeper. The film's reported budget is $14.6 million.

Dario Argento raises money for Iggy Pop movie

Dario Argento has launched a campaign on crowdfunding site IndieGogo to fund a Christmas horror film starring Iggy Pop. The film will be called "Sandman" and will talk about a maniac who scrapes out children's eyes with a dessert spoon. Argento and Iggy Pop hope their film can become a new Christmas classic, pushing cheesy romantic comedies about snowflake love into the background. Those wishing to support “Sandman” Argento and Iggy Pop are promised various bonuses - from the first ten pages of the horror script to the role of one of the victims.

ABC is making a series about the CIA's most secret program

The American company announced the filming of a mini-series about the MK-ULTRA project, a secret CIA program for recruiting agents, destroying their identities and creating a new one, as well as to improve the effectiveness of interrogations. As part of this project, top-secret developments were carried out on mind control using psychotropic drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, psychological pressure, sexual violence and other forms of torture. The program existed in the 1950s and 60s and was officially closed for ethical reasons - most of the subjects were ordinary citizens who suffered from mild forms of depression and neurosis and turned to doctors with whom the CIA collaborated, as well as prisoners and the mentally ill. The mini-series will be written by Karen Stillman, for whom working on a spy theme is not new - ABC is currently showing her series about the former head of the CIA counterintelligence unit, who turned out to be a Soviet agent, Ames Aldrich.

Unknown stories of Truman Capote published

Swiss publisher Peter Haag, who discovered 20 Truman Capote stories in the archives of the New York Public Library last year, has published four of them in German translation for the first time in ZEITmagazin. All of the works Haag found date back to Capote's youth (some poems were written by the writer at age 11), some short stories and poems were published in the school newspaper, but most were never published. In English, the complete collection of the newly discovered works is due to be published by the American publishing house Random House in December 2015.

So, what is next? Shall we curse Islam? Yes, we have already destroyed several times more Muslims than Muslims have killed Americans

Ben Affleck on growing Islamophobia in the US

The first exhibition dedicated to mannequins opened

Photo: © The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

For the grand exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, 180 exhibits were collected: paintings, books, photographs and films, with the help of which curators trace the history of the mannequin in art - from an auxiliary tool to a full-fledged protagonist of works and a fetish. The works presented in the exhibition, which will travel from England to the Bourdelle Museum in Paris, span five centuries: there are carved wooden mannequins from the 16th century, paintings by Poussin, Millet, Cézanne and Degas, photographs by Man Ray, sculptures by Salvador Dali and the Chapman brothers. The latter unexpectedly became one of the main events of the exhibition: surrounded by all types of mannequins, the Chapmans’ works lost all their provocativeness, but their direct relationship with the works of one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, John Millais, was revealed.

Today, 14 million listeners are the regular audience of the radio series “New Home, New Life,” which the BBC began producing in Afghanistan in 1994, by order of the British Ministry of Defense. The drama about the lives of ordinary Afghans was the first entertainment show in the country after the war, touching on topical issues such as women's rights, the cessation of opium poppy cultivation, ethnic tolerance, blood feuds and the preservation of traditions. Initially aimed mainly at a female audience, the series quickly gained popularity - even Taliban field commanders confessed their love for it. The series was published under the auspices of UNESCO, and the participation in the financing of the program by the British Ministry of Defense was not advertised until recently.

The marathon will last 36 hours , concluding the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum. The exhibition will run continuously from 11 am on October 18 to 11 am on October 19, during which time additional excursions will be organized with exhibition curator Scott Rothkopf, and at night the artist himself will visit the retrospective to sign autographs for everyone. Holding a 36-hour marathon for the management of the Whitney Museum is more a necessity than a publicity stunt: the exhibition of the most expensive living artist, which opened on June 27, has already been visited by 250 thousand people, and in recent weeks the museum has had to work seven days a week to let everyone through.

The Government of India allocated 2 million rupees for the development of the museum-estate of the Roerich family in the Himalayas. The donation is timed to coincide with the anniversaries that the museum is celebrating this year: the 140th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas Roerich and the 110th anniversary of the birth of Svyatoslav Roerich. In the estate, in which several generations of the Roerich family lived for more than 60 years, the furnishings of the house were recreated, the art gallery was updated, and a monument with bas-relief portraits of all family members was unveiled. The money allocated by the Government of India will be used for further development of the museum and the study of the artistic and literary heritage of the family, as well as for various educational programs carried out by the International Roerich Memorial Trust.

The first cave paintings were not made in Europe

Recent research results by archaeologists and historians prove that images of human palms and ancient animals found in the Indonesian Maros caves in the 1950s were created not 10 thousand years ago, as previously thought, but much earlier. Chemical tests showed that the handprints were made in Indonesian caves at least 39,900 years ago - they predate known European cave paintings by at least 2 thousand years. This gives reason to assume that the “cultural explosion” did not occur in Europe - or, in any case, not only here. Scientists consider new facts as a powerful argument in favor of the fact that abstract thinking and traditions of rock painting existed among ancient people in Africa even before the colonization of Europe and Asia, but works of the African period have either not yet been discovered or simply not preserved due to the climatic features of the continent .

Ulyana Volokhova

News – Weekend – Kommersant