Anatoliy Solonitsyn

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.Read More »

Victor and Natasha drive back to Moscow after a good honeymoon trip by the Black Sea. Already nearing home, Victor hits an elderly lady while driving too fast. All of a sudden, their plans for a good life together are in doubt. Victor is going to face trial, may go to prison.

To start with, the situation seems to him just ridiculous and sad. They are so young and bright. Their whole life is ahead of them. The lady that was hit by Victor was old, probably half blind and careless in the street. Surely the old lady is more to blame for her own death than Victor, isn’t she? Why did this have to happen precisely to him? Should he accept the blame for the accident and thus risk long-term prison, and the end of his career and marital prospects? Does he have to pay for it or not? Should he not escape, somehow? What is the point of self-sacrifice in such a situation? The film also shows a clash between the young and the old, the bright and the ordinary, the haves and the have nots.Read More »

The Russian POW joins the partisan guerrillas and proves his loyalty fighting the Nazis.Read More »

Tanya Tyotkina is a nurse in a hospital train taking the wounded soldiers from Civil War battle fields. The plain, shy and semi-illiterate young girl sincerely believes in world revolution. She does not realize the importance of the events she is taking part in but wants to express what she sees around her in drawings. Tanya has a rare gift of a true original artist and that makes her death even more tragic.
“Golden Leopard” and Award to I. Churikova for Best Female Lead at the 22nd IFF in Locarno, Switzerland (1969).
Source www.lenfilm.ruRead More »

Presented as a tableaux of seven sections in black and white, with a final montage of Rublev’s painted icons in color, the film takes an unflinching gaze at medieval Russia during the first quarter of the 15th century, a period of Mongol-Tartar invasion and growing Christian influence.

Commissioned to paint the interior of the Vladimir cathedral, Andrei Rublev (Anatoli Solonitsyn) leaves the Andronnikov monastery with an entourage of monks and assistants, witnessing in his travels the degradations befalling his fellow Russians, including pillage, oppression from tyrants and Mongols, torture, rape, and plague. Faced with the brutalities of the world outside the religious enclave, Rublev’s faith is shaken, prompting him to question the uses or even possibility of art in a degraded world. After Mongols sack the city of Vladimir, burning the very cathedral that he has been commissioned to paint, Rublev takes a vow of silence and withdraws completely, removing himself to the hermetic confines of the monastery.Read More »

Synopsis
An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.Read More »

Twenty-Six Days in the Life of Dostoyevsky was entered on February 16th at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Dostoyevsky’s death on February 9th, 1881, and won a “Best Actor” award for Anatoly Solonitsyn as Dostoyevsky. Solonitsyn was a favorite actor in Andrei Tarkovsky’s films, and this was to be his penultimate role. This brief imaginary period in the famed Russian writer’s life encapsulates one of his darker moments in 1866. At that time he was still a relatively unknown writer whose first widely acclaimed work, Crime and Punishment, was just on the horizon. His life was at a very low ebb as he struggled with debts he could not pay, and as he fought depression over the loss of his wife to tuberculosis, and the death of his brother, who was very close to him. His first literary journal had to be scrapped because of political reasons, and the second venture needed funding. The police come to see him, sent by his publisher who is demanding recompense for debts overdue. Desperate to escape the pressure on all sides, Dostoyevsky decides to undertake the impossible and write the story of The Gambler in 26 days, thereby satisfying the debt to the publisher at least.Read More »

Quote:
Widely recognized as a masterpiece, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 205-minute medieval epic, based on the life of the Russian monk and icon painter, was not seen as the director intended it until its re-release over twenty years after its completion. The film was not screened publicly in its own country (and then only in an abridged form) until 1972, three years after winning the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Calling the film frightening, obscure, and unhistorical, Soviet authorities edited the picture on several occasions, removing as much as an entire hour from the original.

Presented as a tableaux of seven sections in black and white, with a final montage of Rublev’s painted icons in color, the film takes an unflinching gaze at medieval Russia during the first quarter of the 15th century, a period of Mongol-Tartar invasion and growing Christian influence. Commissioned to paint the interior of the Vladimir cathedral, Andrei Rublev (Anatoli Solonitsyn) leaves the Andronnikov monastery with an entourage of monks and assistants, witnessing in his travels the degradations befalling his fellow Russians, including pillage, oppression from tyrants and Mongols, torture, rape, and plague. Faced with the brutalities of the world outside the religious enclave, Rublev’s faith is shaken, prompting him to question the uses or even possibility of art in a degraded world. After Mongols sack the city of Vladimir, burning the very cathedral that he has been commissioned to paint, Rublev takes a vow of silence and withdraws completely, removing himself to the hermetic confines of the monastery.
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