USSR

  • Abram Room – Strogiy yunosha AKA A Strict Young Man (1935)

    1931-1940Abram RoomExperimentalPoliticsUSSR
    Strogiy yunosha (1935)
    Strogiy yunosha (1935)

    Two heros are placed face to face in this film; a famous medical professor who has kept his bourgeois lifestyle intact and a young man engaged in the Komsomol, an ardent enforcer of mankind’s new moral code for the construction of communism. But the severe young man falls in love with the professor’s wife.Read More »

  • Dziga Vertov – Entuziazm (Simfoniya Donbassa) AKA Enthusiasm (The Donbass Symphony) (1930)

    Dziga Vertov1921-1930DocumentaryExperimentalSoviet montageUSSR
    Entuziazm (Simfoniya Donbassa) (1930)
    Entuziazm (Simfoniya Donbassa) (1930)

    PLOT:
    Vertov and his Kino group produced this lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbas who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the five year plan. Enthusiasm is most noteworthy for it’s creative use of the new sound medium. Vertov liberated the recording equipment from the studio and shot sound on location. He also used common everyday sounds and wove them into what can only be described as a symphony. In fact, after seeing the film Charlie Chaplin wrote: “Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to sound so beautiful. I regard it as one of the most exhilarating symphonies I have heard. Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician.”Read More »

  • Vasili Levin – Petlya Oriona AKA The Orion Loop (1981)

    1981-1990Sci-FiUSSRVasili Levin

    A strange phenomenon has been noticed on the outskirts of our Solar system that quickly approaches the Earth. It’s called “Orion’s Loop.” A spaceship with a crew of people and androids identical to them is sent to intercept the anomaly. But strange events start happening as the spaceship approaches the mysterious loop.Read More »

  • Kira Muratova – Dolgie provody AKA A Long Goodbye (1971)

    Kira Muratova1971-1980DramaUSSR

    A single mother is confused by the changes in her teenage son, who has become distant since spending summer vacation with his father.Read More »

  • Kira Muratova – Korotkiye vstrechi AKA Brief Encounters (1967)

    1961-1970DramaKira MuratovaUSSR

    Anna Lawton wrote:
    After a brilliant debut with Our Daily Bread (1965), co-directed with her husband Alexander Muratov, Muratova was allowed to make her own film, Brief Encounters (1967). On the surface the story was simple enough. Valentina, a conscientious civil servant in charge of the regional housing office, and Maxim, a geologist-prospector and guitar player devoted to an itinerant and adventurous life, have a difficult relationship – a series of brief encounters and lengthy separations. Their episodic meetings bring into focus their love and need for each other, but also their basic differences, disappointments, and resentment. There is a third character in this love triangle, Nadya, a country girl Valentina hires as a maid without knowing of her past relation with Maxim.Read More »

  • Konstantin Yudin – Smelye lyudi AKA The Horsemen (1950)

    1941-1950DramaKonstantin YudinUSSRWar

    The rival of a worker on a Cossack stud farm exposes him during the war as a Nazi and rescues the owner’s daughter from a train about to be blown up by partisans.Read More »

  • Igor Talankin – Dnevnye zvyozdy AKA The Stars of the Day (1968)

    1961-1970DramaIgor TalankinUSSR

    Dnevnye Zvyozdy (“The Stars of the Day”, 1966) was based on poetess Olga Berggolts’s autobiography. She was a difficult figure for the authorities: though she stayed in Leningrad during the siege making inspirational radio broadcasts, her more personal work was suppressed, even after her death. Suspended strangely between interior monologue, poetic recitation, exterior action and memory, it won an award at the Venice Film Festival. It also introduced Talankin to the actress Alla Demidova, who appeared in most of his subsequent films.Read More »

  • Sergei Solovyov – Assa (1987)

    1981-1990CrimeDramaSergei SolovyovUSSR

    ASSA is set in Crimea during the winter in the mid eighties. A young musician (Bananan) falls for mobster’s (Krymov) young mistress (Alika). The parallel story line involves an 18th century assassination plot.Read More »

  • Georgi Daneliya – Ya shagayu po Moskve AKA I Walk Around Moscow (1964)

    1961-1970ComedyGeorgi DaneliyaRomanceUSSR

    A 1964 Soviet film directed by Georgiy Daneliya and produced by Mosfilm studios. It stars Nikita Mihalkov, Aleksei Loktev, Jevgeny Steblov and Galina Polskikh. The film also features cameos by four People’s Artists of the USSR: Rolan Bykov, Vladimir Basov, Lev Durov, and Inna Churikova.

    The famous movie theme, performed by Mikhalkov, was written by the composer Andrej Petrov. The film, regarded as one of the most characteristic of the Khrushchev Thaw, premiered at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival and won a prize for the work of cameraman Vadim Yusov, best known for his subsequent collaboration with Andrei Tarkovsky.Read More »

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