Russian Film

Kinotavr Film Festival announces winners

2013-06-09T20:57:00.001+02:00

Director Alexander Veledinsky's The Geographer Drank Away His Globe (2013) won the Grand Prix at the Kinotavr Russian Film Festival in the Olympic city of Sochi on Sunday evening. The screen adaptation of the best-selling book of the same name by Alexei Ivanov follows the life of Viktor Sluzhkin, a teacher of geography in a secondary school in the Ural city of Perm. The comedy chronicles the stresses of his work, family and love for a student. Actor Konstantin Khabensky, who previously played a Russian spy in the British film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), took best actor for his portrayal of Sluzhkin. Made for a Russian audience, it remains to be seen whether the film will gain any platforms internationally.

Stanislav Govorukhin Does not Want to Make Films Any More

2013-06-09T20:49:00.002+02:00

The well-known Russian director Stanislav Govorukhin, the head of the Duma Culture Committee after screening of his work Druggist in Winter Theater of Sochi on Tuesday confessed he was offended at the audience because of reaction to his movie Weekend and would probably no more shoot films.

This year Weekend became the movie opening the Kinotavr Film Festival, which kicked off in Sochi on June 2.

“The movie will not be titled this way, it is not completed yet. There were several screenings and reaction was identical every time. When I heard laughter for the first time, it astonished and even offended me. But they laughed in three different audiences in the same places” —Mr. Govorukhin said during a meeting with the audience and then pointed out that he would probably not make any more films— “the spirit somehow is not there”.

Kinotavr is taking place from June 2 to June 9 this year. 12 movies are in the main competition of the present festival.

Cannes' participants shine in Sochi film festival Kinotavr

2013-06-04T21:57:00.000+02:00

The Russian city of Sochi is taking a break from its Olympic preparations this summer to showcase the best young Russian filmmakers at the Kinotavr Film Festival, running June 2-9. Headlining the festival, Russia’s biggest, is President Vladimir Putin’s favorite film director, the veteran Stanislav Govorukhin.

The festival’s most anticipated premieres are all from young directors, and are very much in the arthouse tradition.

Alexander Veledinsky’s The Geographer Drank His Globe Away (Geograf Globus Propil) stars Night Watch actor Konstantin Khabersky as a high-school teacher in the city of Perm, while Andrei Stempkovsky’s The Delivery Guy (Raznoshchik) tells the story of a young man who delivers pizzas while trying to pay for his father’s expensive medical treatment. Another premiere, Alexei Fedorchenko’s Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Nebesniye Zheny Lugovykh Mari), focuses on fantasy tales about the Mari people, a Finno-Ugric ethnic group living in Russia.

Kicking off the festival at the June 2 Opening Gala was Weekend, Govoroukhin’s homage to French auteur Louis Malle. In Malle’s 1958 French noir thriller “Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud” (Lift to the Scaffold) – itself adapted from a pulp novel of the same name by Noel Calef – an ex-paratrooper teams up with his mistress to murder her industrialist husband.

The film was instrumental in inspiring the French “New Wave”, in which Malle was a key player.

In Weekend, whose screenplay was written by Govorukhin, the stage moves to 21st century Russia, but the film retains the aesthetics of Malle’s classic, being shot in atmospheric black-and-white.

More here.

Konstantin Lopushansky: The Role - Роль (2013)

2013-05-31T00:37:00.000+02:00

Director: Konstantin Lopushansky
Starring: Anastasia Sheveleva , Maxim Sukhanov , Leonid Brain , Maria Yarvenhelmi

"The Role" is about a brilliant actor in revolutionary Russia who takes on the greatest role of his life -- the role of another man. Influenced by the ideas of symbolism and the Silver Age, he decides to slip into the life of his doppelganger – a revolutionary leader in the new Soviet Russia. First intrigued, then obsessed, he flings himself into the role and lives it to the hilt… even when the play of the life he is writing heads towards a tragic finale. Based on true incidents in the lives of Russia’s symbolists, this gripping film explores how far one man will go for the role of a lifetime.

The film be shown at 35th MOSCOW FILM FESTIVAL in COMPETITION PROGRAM

Konstantin Lopushansky: The Ugly Swans - Гадкие Лебеди (2006)

2013-05-31T00:17:00.000+02:00

Directed by Konstantin Lopushansky.
Based on the novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
Cast: Gregory Hlady, Leonid Mozgovoy, Aleksey Kortnev

Awards: Grand-Prix of the Ravenna Nightmare Film Festival (Italy)

The script for «The Ugly Swans» is based on the story about so called ghost town where the boarding school for gifted children was located. A young and frightfully strange generation was growing up there, infinite number of commissions and special services scrutinizing closely this anomaly were chasing around. A hero, who had to carry out his own investigation, appeared against these events. But that was only his excuse. He arrived to this town just to save his child. The fight between the characters arose not for the certain children but for the form of the Future that had to be chosen by the mankind.

Russian Director Pyotr Todorovsky Dies at 87

2013-05-24T23:27:00.001+02:00

Russian director Pyotr Todorovsky died in Moscow on Friday at 87.

Todorovsky, a World War II veteran, began his career in cinema as a director of photography. He photographed several classical Soviet films, including 1956’s Vesna na Zarechnoy Ulitse (Spring on Zarechnaya Street), directed by Marlen Khutsiyev and Feliks Mironer.

Todorovsky made his directorial debut in 1962 with the drama Nikogda (Never) and he became an important director rather late in his career. In 1981, he made the popular melodrama Lyubimaya Zhenshchina Mekhanika Gavrilova (The Mechanic Gavrilov's Beloved Woman). It was followed by Voyenno-Polevoy Roman (Wartime Romance), a melodrama set during WWII, which was shortlisted for the best foreign language film Oscar in 1985 and brought the Berlin Film Festival’s best actress Silver Bear to lead Inna Churikova.

Todorovsky’s next movie was the 1989 box office champion Interdevochka (Intergirl), centered on prostitution, which for many years was a taboo topic in the Soviet Union. The movie brought Yelena Yakovleva, the lead actress, the Russian award Nika and the best actress award at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where the film also collected the Special Jury Prize.

Todorovsky’s last film was 2008’s WWII drama Riorita. He also scored most of his films.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Alexei Balabanov: Last master of a bygone era in film

2013-05-24T16:44:00.002+02:00

Iconic Russian film director Alexei Balabanov passed away on May 18, 2013. He is best known for his portrayal of Russia in the 1990s, particularly in his films Brother and Brother 2.

Balabanov was born on Feb. 25, 1959 in the Urals city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) and earned a degree in foreign languages. He fought with the Soviet army in Afghanistan, an experience he drew on for his films War and Cargo 200. In 1990, after completing an advanced training course in scriptwriting and filmmaking, Balabanov settled in St. Petersburg.

Balabanov’s first important production was Happy Days, shot in 1991. Constructed from the debris of the Soviet Union, the film heralded a new era in Russian cinematography. In a sense, Balabanov’s films are comparable to the works of western film directors. Certain parallels can be drawn between his movies and the early work of Quentin Tarantino in their shared taste for crime, violence and a scarcely justified passion for atrocities.

One of Balabanov’s most scandalous movies, Of Freaks and Men, which provoked mixed feelings in even the most sophisticated film fans, can only be compared to The Idiots by Lars von Trier and 120 Days of Sodom by Paolo Pasolini.

However, Balabanov is a purely Russian film director in spirit, who is also a product of his time. He never cared for the glory of foreign film festivals, preferring to express his love of his country and the views of a true Russian Orthodox Christian. All of his films were about Russia. He once said: “I don’t like festivals. They are boring. I don’t know anyone in the government. I don’t keep in touch with anyone. I live in St. Petersburg, and I don’t hang out anywhere. All I do is make films. It’s a good thing if they like them upstairs too. What’s the harm in that?”

Although Balabanov was frequently perceived by film critics and the public as a master of black humor and glorifier of violence, his films were not limited to crime dramas. He worked in a wide range of genres, completing 14 feature films, including the situational drama Brother and its sequel, Brother 2.

More here.

Director Alexey Balabanov Died

2013-05-18T18:23:00.000+02:00

Russian film director Alexei Balabanov has died near St. Petersburg of an “attack” at the age of 54.
During the filming of his latest movie, "I want" Balabanov said many times that his days are numbered, and this will be his last work.

Alexey Balabanov has gained wide acclaim of mass public thanks to his tough action movies about Russian mafia. Why bandits? “People have always watched and will watch films about bandits” – says the film director in his interviews. “I create films in turn: popular – unpopular… and it is not deliberately, it just happens this way.” Soon Balabanov is going to release a new (non-bandit) film, and time will show, if it is popular or not. Anyway, all of his films, whether obviously aimed at love of masses or not, are not devoid of significant ideas and powerful impact on the viewer – that is what makes Aleksei Balabanov interesting.

Alexey Balabanov was born on February 25, 1959 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). In 1981 he graduated from Translation Faculty of Gorky Teachers’ Training University. From 1983 to 1987 Alexei worked as an assistant of a film director at Sverdlovsk film studio. Later Balabanov studied at the experimental course “Authors’ Cinema” of the High Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors, graduating in 1990.

BROTHER (2) with English subtitles

Balabanov started his creative career in “big cinema” in 1991 with directing his first full-length feature Shchastlivyye dni (Happy Days) after his own script. In the same year he became the co-author of the script Pogranichniy Conflict (Frontier Conflict) by the young film director Nadezhda Khvorova.

In 1992 Aleksei Balabanov together with producers Sergei Selyanov and Vasily Grigor'ev established the STV Film Company, which later participated in creation of almost all of his films.

War 2002 with English subtitles

In 1994 the film director released Zamok (The Castle) after the famous novel by Frantz Kafka.

In the same year Balabanov debuted as a producer, with the film Ispoved neznakomtsu (Secrets Shared with a Stranger). Next year he took part in creation of the film almanac Pribytiye poyezda (The Arrival of a Train) (1995) dedicated to the 100th anniversary of cinematography; Balabanov’s segment Trofim won a number of cinema awards.

More here.

Kinotavr Festival to be Opened with Govorukhin's New Film

2013-05-15T20:30:00.004+02:00

Add caption

Organizers of the Kinotavr Film Festival have announced the competitive program of the film festival.

As the official website of the film festival shows, the Kinotavr will be opened with Stanislav Govorukhin's new work under the title Weekend. The film is based on the detective novel The Elevator to Scaffold by the French writer Noel Kalef. Mr. Govorukhin has transferred the action to Moscow. The leading roles in the movie are played by Victor Sukhorukov, Maxim Matveyev and Alexander Domogarov.

The main competitive program of the film festival has included 12 movies altogether. In particular, works by Alexey Fedorchenko, Alexander Veledinsky, and Taisiya Igumentseva will compete for the Grand Prix of the festival.

The jury of the main competition will be headed by the illustrious film director Alexander Mitta. The festival will be crowned with Dmitry Konstantinov's movie Farewell.

More here.

Russian filmmakers await the 66th Cannes Film Festival

2013-05-13T13:01:00.003+02:00

Russian participation in the Cannes Film Festival began when the USSR was invited to the first festival in 1939. France extended the invitation during a period when it held high aspirations of turning the great power into its ally.

However, the first festival never took place. The scheduled date, September 1, 1939, brought the outbreak of World War II.

The Cannes Film Festival resumed in 1946, and the Soviet Union was invited as a victorious nation. “However, the nation’s involvement in the festival was spoiled by technical problems during screenings, and Soviet officials accused the organizers of sabotaging their films. Soviet movies were barely shown at the festival over the four following decades.”

There were, however, a few major Soviet successes in Cannes. Fridrikh Elmer's The Turning Point became the first Russian film to take the Palme d'Or in 1946.

In 1958, Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying became the second, and also last, Russian film to take the prize.

Many have come close to taking the Palme d'Or since. Andrei Tarkovsky was nominated for the Palme d'Or three times, for Solaris in 1972, Nostalghia in 1983 and The Sacrifice in 1986.

Grigoriy Chukray, like Tarkovsky was also nominated three times, for The Forty-First in 1957, Ballad of a Soldier in 1960 and There Was an Old Couple in 1965.

In the late 1990s, the controversies and intrigues associated with the participation of Russian films came to an end.

Since then, the likes of Pavel Lungin, Nikita Mikhalkov, Alexander Sokurov (nominated for the Palme d'Or five times) and Andrey Zvyagintsev have had a chance to really emerge. In a recent trend, the juries have begun paying more attention to film debuts.

More here.

Ekaterina Klimova

2013-05-01T01:55:00.000+02:00

Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Klimova born January 24, 1978 is a Russian film, theater and TV actress, who started her career in 1999.

In 2002, she received Viktor Rozov Award for the Best Actress Under Age 30.

"We're from the future - 2" (2010)

One of her notable roles is Dutchess Natalia Repnina in 2003 television series Poor Nastya.

"Poor Nastya" (2003-2004)

Sins of Fathers 2004

Dmitrii Fiks: The White Moor, or Intimate Stories about My Neighbours - Белый мавр или три истории о моих соседях (2012)

2013-04-29T20:33:00.001+02:00

Director: Dmitri Fiks
Writer: Maksim Stishov
Stars: Andrey Sokolov, Ekaterina Strizhenova, Aleksandr Galibin

The White Moor, or Intimate Stores about My Neighbors is a film driven by the romantic intrigues of what director Dmitrii Fiks calls “the top of the middle class.” The troubled personal lives of three professionally successful men are examined in an almanac film that is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. The three storylines each portray husbands in relative states of impotence: Andrei (Aleksandr Galibin), who cannot obtain a divorce from his wife to marry his mistress; Misha (Andrei Sokolov), who is estranged from his once-cheating wife and lesbian daughter; and Lenia (Igor' Vernik), a closeted homosexual facing increasing pressure from his wife to have another child.

The marital problems of the families are inextricably linked to each respective husband’s economic standing, a fact reinforced by the film’s mise-en-scène. Almost all important plot developments take place behind the wheel of expensive foreign cars. Whether Andrei is orally pleasured by his mistress, Misha is kicked out by his wife, or Lenia is harassed to produce another child, this is a class of Russians in motion. The film’s opening scenes reinforce an obsession with vehicles: Andrei’s wife hits and kills a man on a bicycle while she is driving, and Misha’s friend, Iura, is injured in a car crash that kills his wife, Ania. It is only in the final scene, moreover, that the three protagonists assemble in the same physical space as their cars weave past one another. If the train contextualized a way of thinking about social advancement in the days of Anna Karenina, The White Moor presents the car as the new symbol of class development.

The car, however, is not the sole symbol of mobility in the film. A vacation in Egypt, a business trip to Tver', and a lusty stay in a swanky dacha all reinforce the idea that these are Russians whose interests and conflicts rest on their relationship to the means of production. It is in Tver', for example, on a trip to examine one of his many dental clinics, that Lenia is able to sleep with another man, just as it is at her dacha that his wife, Vika (Zhanna Epple), meets a well-to-do man who will help her conceive, arriving, of course, in his expensive SUV. The intrigue between Andrei and his controlling wife, Natasha (Anna Iakunina), similarly must play out “elsewhere,” as Andrei contemplates to what end he will go to free himself from his suffocating relationship.

More here.

Aleksey Balabanov: Me Too - Я тоже хочу (2012)

2013-04-24T20:03:00.000+02:00

Director: Aleksey Balabanov
Writer: Aleksey Balabanov
Stars: Oleg Garkusha, Yuriy Matveev, Aleksandr Mosin

Aleksei Balabanov described his new film, Me Too, as his most personal film. Can we then interpret this film as Balabanov’s statement of his religious views and of the coming end of the world?[1] With its allegorical elements and religious symbolism, can we call this film an expression of a “new sincerity” in contemporary Russian culture?[2]

The film certainly gestures towards the transcendental. In its interest in existential questions and use of the fantastic, Me Too shares thematic similarity with Andrei Tarkovskii’s Stalker (1979).[3] Yet do the film’s message and style suggest the timeless and the eternal? Does Balabanov’s fourteenth film significantly differ from his other ironic and postmodernist works?

Me Too begins in a way not unusual for a Balabanov film, when one of the characters, the bandit (Aleksandr Mosin) kills four of his adversaries. However, the film’s plot moves into a different register when its protagonist enters a sauna. The bandit tells his friend, the musician (Oleg Garkusha), a tale about “the bell tower of happiness (kolokol’nia schast’ia).” The bandit himself learned the story from his confessor, Father Rafail. Located somewhere between St. Petersburg and Uglich, the mysterious bell tower is surrounded by something similar to Tarkovskii’s Zone, in that after a strong pulse of electromagnetic radiation this place fell into a nuclear winter, where most people die because of high radiation. However, the bell tower is also a place of rapture, where the chosen are taken to happiness. The friends decide to go to this place of no return. On their way, they rescue the bandit’s friend, whom they call Matvei (Iurii Matveev), from a rehabilitation center. Matvei decides to pick up his elderly father (Viktor Gorbunov). On their way to the bell tower, they also give a ride to Liuba, a prostitute and a former Philosophy student (Alisa Shitikova), and, finally, to a boy-prophet (played by Balabanov’s son Petr), who can predict the future and knows exactly who will be “taken” by the bell tower.

Reviewed by Irina Anisimova © 2013 in KinoKultura

Mikheil Chiaureli: The Unforgettable Year 1919 - Незабываемый 1919-й (1952)

2013-04-09T21:49:00.001+02:00

Director: Mikheil Chiaureli
Writers: Mikheil Chiaureli, Aleksandr Filimonov,
Stars: Pavel Molchanov, Mikheil Gelovani, Boris Andreyev

An incredible piece of Chiaureli's work as (according to the BFI Companion) one of the principal cinematic architects of the Stalin cult of personality. The film, like Love and Hate, takes place in 1919 and tells a civil war story; but unlike that movie, this one is focussed clearly on a particular leading personality in the struggle against the whites: Stalin.

May 1919. The city of Petrograd, the Bolsheviks' stronghold in Russia, is attacked by the counter-revolutionary White Army of General Nikolai Yudenich, who is supported by the imperialist British, and especially by the warmongering Winston Churchill. The city's High Soviet is demoralized and about to order an evacuation, while the White fifth column inside it plots an insurrection. The Krasnaya Gorka fort dispatches a detachment of Baltic Fleet sailors to assist Petrograd, among them is the young Vladimir Shibaev. As the Red Army faces defeat by the Whites, Joseph Stalin arrives on the battlefield, rallies the communists and routes the enemy, saving the city. ...

Yuli Raizman: Dream of a Cossack -Кавалер Золотой Звезды (1950)

2013-04-07T01:51:00.000+02:00

Director: Yuli Raizman
Writers: S. Babaevskiy (novel), Boris Chirskov
Stars: Sergey Bondarchuk, Anatoli Chemodurov, A. Kanayeva

Sergei Tutarinov a veteran of the Great Patriotic war returns to his native village to take an active part in its restoration. His initiatives are strongly supported by the local Secretary of the Communist party. Tutarinov becomes chairman of the party and begins to rebuild the whole town after the defeat of the Germans.

Yuli Yakovlevich Raizman, film-maker: born 15 December 1903; died 11 December 1994. Yuli Raizman was one of the finest of all Soviet film directors, in addition to being one of the most long-lasting.

Joining the Mezhrabpom-Rus Studio in Moscow in 1924; he was still fit and working for Mosfilm in the late 1980s. His final film, A Time of Desires (a dispassionate and rather cruel study of Soviet nouveaux riches), was released in 1984. In collaboration with the scriptwriter Yevgeny Gabrilovich, Raizman was responsible for a clutch of movies which - almost uniquely in their time - hinted that the experience of Communism was among other things an experience of suffering.

Sometimes he went the other way too. There were a number (but not a large number) of Socialist Realist films in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including The Knight of the Golden Star (unshown at the National Film Theatre retrospective of Raizman's filmsin 1984).

Of this genre, the director remarked that he merely wanted to see if he could "spit as far as the other fellow". As justification for a pure experiment in style - as opposed to a credo deeply believed in - this may or may not be disingenuous. Certainly, throughout his career, Raizman managed, more or less, to stay out of trouble. But it could have been because of an innate and rather aristocratic reticence as much as to discreditable alternatives.

As a Jew, and an exceptionally sophisticated artist, Raizman had a strong sense of style, inherited perhaps from his father, Iakov, who was a famous couturier, responsible among other duties for costuming the Moscow Arts Theatre in the period up to the Revolution, he must have been vulnerable to the campaign against "cosmopolitanism" which Stalin unleashed in the late 1940s; but he weathered that storm as he weathered all others. The most dangerous period of his career (as for so many other artists and intellectuals) was 1937. Raizman mixed at that time in the circle of Elena Sokolovskaya, the deputy head of Mosfilm, who earlier that year, for no particular reason, was arrested and subsequently shot. For Raizman an uncomfortable couple of months - at least - followed this arrest.

But he was rescued from embarrassment by the enormous national and international success of his current release (his first collaboration with Gabrilovich), The Last Night, an essay in Bolshevik heroics. The film's surface ideology endorses the usual Soviet platitudes: vigilance against enemies, omniscience of the Party, deific status of Lenin, and so forth. But in comparison with other films of the period (Mikhail Romm's Lenin, 1918, for example) it is notably lacking in bloodthirstiness. In u nexpectedplaces it is humorous and gentle. And as well as being visually elegant (a quiet, formal pictorial innovativeness was one of Raizman's hallmarks) it reveals, like all of his best films, an effort towards psychological complexity.

Raizman trained at Mezhrabpom-Rus - the most commercial and American- oriented of the studios operating in the 1920s. In film history terms, it was a period of vigorous experimentation; but from the outset Raizman felt no particular attraction towards fashionable theories of montage....

Alexander Sokurov's 'Faust' Wins Russian Award Nika

2013-04-04T22:08:00.000+02:00

Alexander Sokurov’s Faust was celebrated as the best film at the Nika award ceremony, which was held in Moscow on Tuesday, while Andrei Proshkin’s Orda (The Horde) scooped the largest number of trophies.

Faust, which collected the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the local critics’ White Elephant award, competed in the best film category with The Horde, Pavel Lungin’s Dirizhyor (Conductor), Avdotya Smirnova’s Kokoko and Karen Shakhnazarov’s Bely Tigr (White Tiger).

At the Nikas, Faust also picked up the best director award for Sokurov, the best script award for Yuri Arabov, who, incidentally, also wrote The Horde and was nominated for both, and the best actor award for Anton Adasinsky, shared with The Horde’s Maxim Sukhanov.

The Horde, which was nominated in eleven categories, ended up with seven statuettes, tying the awards’ all-time record. In addition to awards for Arabov and Sukhanov, the period piece set in the 14th century collected the best cinematography award for Yuri Raisky, the best actress award for Roza Khairullina, the best set design and the best costume design.

More here.

Oblomov (1979) - Olga singing "Casta Diva"

2013-04-03T16:21:00.001+02:00

Russell Scott Valentino notes that the question of Russia's cultural relationship to Western Europe occupied not only nineteenth-century writers like Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Goncharov, but also twentieth-century Russian and Soviet filmmakers.

He claims that "the musical introduction of Olga, her off-camera performance of the 'Casta Diva' cavatina from Bellini's Norma, conveys a realm within which she develops throughout the film. While suggestive of beauty and lyricism it also represents an assumed, Western, non-Russian orientation to life.... one effect of this initial linkage of Olga to West European Romantic opera is to draw her authenticity (her 'Russianness') into question" (156-7).

Valentino, Russell Scott. "Adapting the Landscape: Oblomov's vision in films." Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001: Screening the Word. Ed. Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.

Sergey Solovyov's Anna Karenina: classic heroine in modern context

2013-04-03T02:33:00.001+02:00

The Russian director Sergei Solovyov presents his long-awaited “Anna Karenina”. It is released online April 1 and 2 in the framework of The Double Dv@ Online Festival of Russian Film.

“It is particularly significant following the success that Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” had in Russian cinemas and the showing of Solovyov’s version on Russia’s Channel One. We’re programming this film in conjunction with the release of Solovyov’s more recent masterpiece, “2-Assa-2.” These two films were made simultaneously, and with the same cast – the link between them is on both a formal and mystical level,” says Valery Kichin, the Festival’s curator.

The Double Dv@ Online Festival of Russian Film gives quality Russian films that did not make it to general release another chance to reach a wider audience. It will run on the official site of Rossiyskaya gazeta from March 26 to April 12. There are two programs: "Unknown Russian Movies – Masterpieces on Show" and “Animation XXI." Films are available for 48 hours, and viewers can watch them online at any time they want during that period.

Gleb Panfilov: The Romanovs: An Imperial Family - Романовы. Венценосная семья (2000)

2013-04-02T12:13:00.000+02:00

Director: Gleb Panfilov
Writers: Inna Churikova, Gleb Panfilov,
Stars: Aleksandr Galibin, Lynda Bellingham, Vladimir Grachyov

AWARDS
2000 “Golden Aries” award for Best Production design ( Alexander Boim, Vladimir Gudilin, Anatoly Panfilov)
2001 International Moscow Human Rights Film Festival “Stalker”. Directors Guild Award (Gleb Panfilov) 2003 St. Petersburg Governor’s prize for cinematic score (Vadim Bibergan)

The idea of making a film about the tragedy of the Tsar’s family haunted Panfilov since 1988, when he was shooting an adaptation of Maxim Gorki’s novel “Mother” and for the first time laid his eyes on the documents of the Romanovs’ case.

After a lengthy research in the archives, this idea finally developed into a screenplay, written by Gleb Panfilov, Inna Churikova, and Ivan Panfilov in 1990. The shooting began in 1996 and lasted exactly a year. English actress Lynda Bellingham was invited to star as Empress Alexandra, who was, after all, Queen Victoria’s favorite granddaughter.

Many scenes were filmed in the Czech Republic, while others were shot on location in former imperial residence in Tsarskoe Selo. The historical details of days long past are recreated in the film with impressive accuracy. In fact, the private study of Tsar Nicholas, recreated exactly as it was before the revolution, was later donated to Ekaterininsky Palace Museum where the film was shot.

Scoping Sergei Eisenstein's Bookshelves

2013-03-30T12:49:00.001+01:00

The great Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) considered cinema “the highest of the arts,” but he was passionate about books. In his memoirs, he rhapsodized about bookstores and the books he found in them: “They fly to me, run to me, cling to me,” he wrote, “so long have I loved them...” People who visited Eisenstein often said they found him sitting among huge piles of books.

When he died, his friends packed up his books and moved them to another apartment, where they remain to this day. The collection, which is not currently open to the public, is overseen by Naum Kleiman, the world’s leading Eisenstein scholar and Director of Russia’s Cinema Museum.

These photographs show a small percentage of the books Eisenstein owned. You can see some of his many histories of literature, theater, and art. He had close to 200 books on psychology, sex, and religion, and many more on American, European, Mexican, Asian, and African-American history and culture (he considered making a film about the Haitian Revolution with his friend Paul Robeson in the lead).

More here.

Cinematryoshka: 40 years without famous director Mikhail Kalatozov

2013-03-28T13:08:00.001+01:00

Russian cinema is like a matryoshka: following the recursive method, which in the art criticism is called "mise-en-abîme", it plays with the various meanings. This video-blog is to help you to gain an insight into contemporary (and as in this case - not contemporary, timeless) Russian cinema.
Today we commemorate the 40th anniversary of Mikhail Kalatozov's death.

More: Cinematryoshka: 40 years without famous director Mikhail Kalatozov

Ivan Pyryev: The Cossacks of Kuban - Кубанские казаки (1949)

2013-03-25T15:36:00.001+01:00

Director: Ivan Pyryev
Writer: Nikolai Pogodin
Stars: Sergei Lukyanov, Marina Ladynina, Aleksandr Khvylya

The Cossacks of the Kuban from Mosfilm (1949) is a color film, glorifying the life of the farmers in the kolkhoz of the Soviet Union's Kuban region, directed by Ivan Pyryev and starring Marina Ladynina, his wife at that time.

Awards :

Prix de la musique à Isaac Dounaevski au festival de Karlovy Vary, 1950
Prix du Travail à Ivan Pyriev, 1950
Prix Staline, 2e niveau à Isaac Dounaevski, à Marina Ladynina et à Ivan Pyriev, 1950

The Alexei German I knew

2013-03-14T22:03:00.001+01:00

Last week, Russians bid farewell to a man many considered to be the country’s greatest living filmmaker. Largely under-appreciated in the West, Alexei German’s films delighted in their complexity, tones, textured aesthetics, and the absence of simple heroes or villains. Ian Christie remembers him

2013 should have been the year that Alexei German’s long-awaited sixth film finally appeared. With just five films released in forty-five years as a director, German has long occupied a unique position in film history, comparable only to that of Terrence Malick. His latest, based on a novel by the Strugatskys, almost unbelievably has been in production since 2000. But on 21 February, German’s death was announced.

I heard the news while in the Czech Republic, where German apparently shot part of what will now be his last film, and felt an immediate sense of loss, as I recalled how both he and his remarkable oeuvre had entered my life at crucial moments during the last decade of the Soviet era. German was born in 1938 and actually began directing in 1968, but as with others of his generation – like Aleksandr Askoldov and Kira Muratova - his early work was either buried or ‘shelved’, as the saying went.

My first encounter came in 1984, when the Soviet Filmmakers Union invited me to assemble a delegation of British ‘independent’ filmmakers, so that they could see at first hand the kind of avant-garde work that never reached official platforms such as the Moscow Film Festival. Our little group included the filmmakers Sally Potter and Derek Jarman, neither as well known as they would become, along with Ed Bennett, Peter Wollen and Peter Sainsbury from the British Film Institute Production Board. Among the films the Union offered to show us was German’s Twenty Days Without War, which had been made in 1977 but never seen abroad. Jarman, who was shooting clandestinely what would become his Imagining October, was deeply impressed by this understated, melancholic reflection on the heightened realities of wartime life on the home front. The world-weary war reporter on leave from Stalingrad, we learned was played by Yuri Nikulin, an ex-clown, who was also one of the most popular of screen comedians. His love interest was played by an equally popular actor and singer Ludmilla Gurchenko; but oblivious to this casting against reputation, we only knew we had seen something of extraordinary integrity in the burnished black-and-white that German always used.

One year on, the Moscow Film Festival of 1985 would prove to be a milestone in the transformation of the USSR. The most controversial competition film by far was Elem Klimov’s Come and See, a ferocious vision of the partisan war against the Nazis in Belorussia that took first prize – a harbinger of the revolution within Soviet cinema that would soon put the previously banned director Elem Klimov in the forefront of Gorbachev’s reforms as first secretary of the Union. But during the festival, a discreet invitation went out to selected visitors that there would be an unannounced screening. A bus took us to a remote cinema and, without explanation, we found ourselves watching an unsubtitled print of German’s masterpiece, My Friend Ivan Lapshin. I was lucky, because my interpreter knew the work of the popular writer Yuri German, Alexei’s father, on whose stories the film is based. All around us, interpreters and puzzled festival visitors were struggling to make sense of this subtly disconcerting film. ...

Oleg Pogodin: Home - Дом (2011)

2013-03-12T23:08:00.001+01:00

Director: Oleg Pogodin
Writer: Oleg Pogodin
Stars: Sergey Garmash, Bogdan Stupka, Yekaterina Rednikova

Parts of Oleg Pogodin’s Home are like the film’s characters: incompatible but forced to stay together. And just like the characters form a family, different parts of the film do make a whole, which surprisingly holds together and at times delights the viewer. Beautifully shot and superbly cast, Home is a flawed yet compelling film that incorporates elements of gangster story, family epic and even western. This mélange reflects the director’s love for American filmmakers in the likes of Terrence Malick, Sam Peckinpah, and Francis Ford Coppola. A trained film critic with a cinephile’s eye, Pogodin transplants American tales to the black soils of Southern Russia, and the result is both local and epic, as the film, set in a family home, in the end turns to sweeping conclusions about the Russian character.

The story is deceptively simple: four generations of the Shamanov family, headed by a strong-willed Grigorii (Bogdan Stupka) and his sensible wife Nadezhda (Larisa Malevannaia), live in an imposing house in the middle of the Don River steppes. The family, getting ready to celebrate Grigorii’s father’s centennial birthday, is joined by Grigorii’s daughter Tamara (Evgeniia Dmitrieva), coming from Moscow and, unexpectedly, by his eldest son Viktor (Sergei Garmash), who returns home after 25 years of absence. What could be a complex enough exploration of a dysfunctional family gets a twist with Viktor’s backstory: a fugitive mobster, he came home to say farewell to his parents as a gang of criminals is on his tail.

Reviewed by Raisa Sidenova © 2012 in KinoKultura

Trailer

Mark Donskoy : Foma Gordeev - Фома Гордеев (1959)

2013-03-06T11:37:00.000+01:00

Director: Mark Donskoy
Writers: Boris Bailik, Mark Donskoy,
Stars: Sergei Lukyanov, Georgi Yepifantsev,Pavel Tarasov

Award:
Locarno International Film Festival - Best Director

Mark Donskoi may not be as familiar to Western audiences as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, or Dovzhenko; his films are in no way as readily recalled as Battleship Potemkin, Mother , or Earth. Like other Soviet filmmakers, he propagandizes about the glories of the Bolshevik Revolution and highlights the life of Lenin. But Donskoi's great and unique contribution to Russian cinema is his adaption to the screen of Maxim Gorki's autobiographical trilogy: The Childhood of Gorki, My Apprenticeship , and My Universities , all based on the early life of the famed writer and shot during the late 1930s. (Years later, Donskoi adapted two other Gorki works, Mother —the same story filmed by Pudovkin in 1926—and Foma Gordeyev. )

In the trilogy, Donskoi chronicles the life of Gorki from childhood on, focusing on the experiences which alter his view of the world. At their best, these films are original and pleasing: the first presents a comprehensive and richly detailed view of rural life in Russia during the 1870s. While delineating the dreams of nineteenth-century Russian youth, Donskoi lovingly recreates the era. The characters are presented in terms of their conventional ambitions and relationships within the family structure. They are not revolutionaries, but rather farmers and other provincials with plump bodies and commonplace faces. The result is a very special sense of familiarity, of fidelity to a time and place. Of course, villains in Gorki's childhood are not innately evil, but products of a repressive czarist society. They are thus compassionately viewed. Donskoi pictures the Russian countryside with imagination, and sometimes even with grandeur.

Donskoi's later noteworthy works include How the Steel Was Tempered , one of the first Russian films to deal with World War II. While based on a Civil War story, the filmmaker includes only the sequences pertaining to Ukrainian resistance to German invaders in 1918, paralleling that situation to the Nazi invasion. The story also recalls the Gorki trilogy in its presentation of a boy who is changed by his encounter with life's challenges.

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