Tower Bawher (2005)

Tower Bawher is a 2005 constructivist-style abstract animated short by Theodore Ushev, set to the musical composition “Time, Forward!“ by Russian composer Georgy Sviridov. The film’s title is an allusion to Tatlin’s Tower, an unbuilt structure conceived by Vladimir Tatlin as a tribute to the glory of the proletariat. Drawing on the tower’s design, the film seems to build toward a utopian goal, until the grandiose, futuristic forms abruptly tumble. In Tower Bawher, Ushev celebrates constructivist art while also critiquing the use of art in the service of ideology. The film contains visual references to such Soviet era artists as Dziga Vertov, the Stenberg brothers, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and Lyubov Popova.[2] The 3 minute 46 second film was made over a five-week period in Montreal, beginning in April 2005, when Ushev ran into problems working on was to have been his first animated short with the National Film Board of Canada, the children’s film Tzaritza.