Film UbuWebEugene Deslaw (1898-1966)
Les nuits électriques (1928)
La marche des machines AKA March of the Machines (1929)
Montparnasse (1929)
Ievhen Slavchenko (Eugene Deslaw) was making a reputation as an avant-garde film maker in Paris . He who emigrated as part of the exodus that followed the defeat of the Ukrainian National Republic . He studied in Paris in the 1920s and at the École Technique Photo-Cinema in 1927. In that year he assisted Abel Gance in making the early French film epic, Napoléon. His abstract and experimental films include March des Machines (1928), La Nuit Électrique (1930), Montparnasse (1931), Négatifs (1932) and Robots (1932). He worked with Boris Kaufmann (collaborator on Marche des Machines ), Alfred Zinnemann (the photographer on Marche des Machines ), Luis Bunuel and Marcel Carné (his assistants on Montparnasse ). Until 1930 he corresponded with the futurist journal Nova generatsiia (New Generation) and with Oleksandr Dovzhenko, whom he met in Paris in 1930 at Oleksa Hlushchenko's studio. Deslaw is considered part of the so-called second wave of the French avant-garde, which included Fernand Léger, Rene Claire, Henri Chaumet, Man Ray and Germain Dulak.