Bed and Sofa (1927) — a.k.a. Love for Three (original title Tretya Meshchanskaya, or Third Petty-Bourgeois Street) — was created by Soviet film director Abram Room and “has become regarded as a great little masterpiece of the silent era” (John DeBartolo). Based on a newspaper anecdote and associated with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, the film portrays a tense yet comic love triangle unfolding in the cramped living quarters of 1920s Moscow. Both bitter and funny, it promotes an empathetic view of women’s liberation.

The screenplay was written by Viktor Shklovsky, the renowned Russian formalist and friend of the Futurist poets. The film was produced and directed by the master cinematographer Abram Room.

Psoy Korolenko presents his poetic commentary and live piano accompaniment to this Soviet avant-garde masterpiece — a unique cine-performance fusing silent film and freestyle poetry. The commentary connects the film’s themes with the lives and works of several key authors, including Vladimir Mayakovsky, Zinaida Gippius, and Nikolai Chernyshevsky. It also playfully echoes ideas found in Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism by Irina Paperno (University of California, Berkeley), Erotic Utopia by Olga Matich (University of California, Berkeley), and Between Men by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

Psoy’s original text was written in Russian. The English translation was prepared by professor, poet, and translator Stuart Goldberg (Georgia Institute of Technology), with later additions by singer-songwriter, translator, and theater artist Daniel Kahn.