USSR

  • Yevgeni Bauer – Posle smerti AKA After Death (1915)

    1911-1920DramaSilentThe Birth of CinemaUSSRYevgeni Bauer

    Posle Smerti [After Death]
    A titan of the early Russian cinema, Evgenii Bauer was born in Russia in 1865. His father was a renowned zither-player, while his sisters became actresses. Bauer graduated from the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Over the years, he was an amateur actor, a caricaturist for magazines, a newspaper satirist, a theatrical impresario, and an artistic photographer. He was especially recognized for designing sets for theatrical productions, a talent that eventually brought him into the cinema when he designed the sets for Drankov and Taldykin’s commemorative historical film, Trekhsotletie Tsarstvovaniya Doma Romanovykh (The Tercentenary of the Rule of the Romanov Dynasty), released in 1913. Encouraged by Drankov and Taldykin, Bauer, then 48 years of age, graduated to directing for their company. Read More »

  • Aleksandr Proshkin – Mikhaylo Lomonosov (1986)

    Drama1981-1990Aleksandr ProshkinEpicUSSR
    kinopoisk.ru

    The strength of mind of Mikhailo Lomonosov was comparable only to that of the Russian Spirit itself. An amazing mixture of natural (rather than ancestral) nobility, overwhelming intellect, sense of the beauty, humour, kind heart, and a total dedication, self sacrifice to the most deserving ideals, would make any true Russian, including Peter the Great, the most proud for the land that gave birth to this unimaginably capable human being. And the film brings out this point to you, not only using great talent of the inspired actors and director, but also by quoting historical facts and documents, and precisely reproducing events, scenes and even emotions. Read More »

  • Boris Barnet – Alyonka (1961)

    1961-1970Boris BarnetComedyUSSR

    Quote:
    Kazakhstan, the 50s. The main heroine of the film is a nine-year-old girl Alyonka, who is sent to town by her parents to study. The girl meets various companions on her long way. Some of them are telling about the story of their settlement or their attempt to settle in this Far East.Read More »

  • Larisa Shepitko – Znoy (1963)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaLarisa ShepitkoUSSR

    Quote:
    Heat was Shepitko’s diploma feature, her extraordinary talent underlined by its unprecedented success, winning prizes at the Leningrad and Karlovy Vary Film Festivals. It was also made in gruelling conditions on the barren steppes, the young director falling ill and having to direct from a stretcher. The story fuses serious political drama and cowboy showdown as an idealistic high school graduate goes to work on a state farm, only to clash with its authoritarian, Stalinist leader.Read More »

  • Aleksey German – Moy drug Ivan Lapshin AKA My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1985)

    1981-1990Aleksey GermanDramaUSSR

    Quote:
    Aleksei German’s singular, multithreaded drama My Friend Ivan Lapshin offers a uniquely stylized look at life in Russia as the flaws of Communism were just beginning to show. Set in a provincial Russian village during the 1930s, the film at times recalls the autobiographical work of Terence Davies or Woody Allen’s Radio Days. Like the work of those directors, German’s film filters most experiences through the eyes of a child, although the child/narrator in this particular movie is not present in the majority of the scenes. Read More »

  • Stanislav Govorukhin – Desyat negrityat AKA Ten Little Indians (1987)

    1981-1990CampMysteryStanislav GovorukhinUSSR

    A psychological thriller based on the novel by Agatha Christie. Ten strangers are forced to come face to face with their dark pasts after receiving invitation to an isolated island off the coast of England.Read More »

  • Yuri Kara – Zavtra byla voyna AKA Tomorrow Was the War [+Extras] (1987)

    1981-1990DramaUSSRYuriy Kara

    This film is based on a novel by Boris Vasiliev and takes place in a small Russian provincial town in 1940, one year before Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The every day life of class 9B is a larger than life portrait of Stalininism and of unconditional loyalty to party dogma.

    At a birthday party a girl, one of the students, recites poetry by a “bourgeois” author. The information leaks out and her liberal father is arrested as a dissident. The daughter is faced by the class teacher and asked to publicly renounce her father which leads to a tragedy. This causes both inner and outer conflicts, the colleagues start to rebel and to question their loyalty, be it to the class teacher or the soviet ideology itself.Read More »

  • Yuriy Ozerov – Osvobozhdenie AKA Liberation (1969)

    1961-1970EpicUSSRWarYuriy Ozerov

    The five films are a dramatized account of the liberation of the Soviet Union’s territory and the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War, focusing on five major Eastern Front campaigns: the Battle of Kursk, the Lower Dnieper Offensive, Operation Bagration, the Vistula–Oder Offensive, and the Battle of Berlin.Read More »

  • Aleksandr Sokurov – Kamen aka Stone (1992)

    1991-2000Aleksandr SokurovArthouseUSSR

    Quote:
    “If ever a film replicated the state of dreaming, Stone does. Which is not to say it is, in the classical sense, surreal; but it has the flow and fugitive feeling of a half-remembered reverie, full of mysteries, portents, inexplicable happenings, and chimerical objects. Set in (and filmed in the actual) Chekhov museum, Stone centers on the relationship between a young museum guard and an older visitor who seems at different times to be a lover, a doctor, or a surrogate father. Shot in evanescent black and white with a sound track of silences, breathing, natural sounds, and fragments of classical music, Stone is haunting and enigmatic” (James Quandt)Read More »

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