Boris Plotnikov

  • Larisa Shepitko – Voskhozhdenie AKA The Ascent (1977) (HD)

    1971-1980DramaLarisa ShepitkoUSSRWar

    Synopsis:
    Two Soviet partisans leave their starving band to get supplies from a nearby farm. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.Read More »

  • Valeri Rubinchik – Dikaya okhota korolya Stakha AKA The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (1980) (HD)

    1971-1980BelarusHorrorThrillerValeri Rubinchik

    Quote:
    It was a dark and stormy night…. at the turn of the century and Bielarecki (Boris Plotnikov), a young ethnographer seeks shelter at Marsh Firs, a gloomy baronial manor set amidst Byelorussian marshes, while he conducts research into the myths and legends of the region. He discovers from the castle’s young and tragic owner, Nadzieja Jankowska (Yelena Dimotrova), that the place is haunted by two ghosts-the Little Man of Marsh Firs and the Lady in Blue-and that her family line was accursed centuries ago when ancestor Roman Jankowska denied the hand of his daughter to King Stach, whose ghost now rides with those of thirteen horsemen to drag Jankowska offspring and their servants to death in the surrounding marshes…Read More »

  • Valeri Rubinchik – Dikaya okhota korolya Stakha AKA The Savage Hunt of King Stakh (1980)

    1971-1980HorrorUSSRValeri Rubinchik

    Quote:
    It was a dark and stormy night…. at the turn of the century and Bielarecki (Boris Plotnikov), a young ethnographer seeks shelter at Marsh Firs, a gloomy baronial manor set amidst Byelorussian marshes, while he conducts research into the myths and legends of the region. He discovers from the castle’s young and tragic owner, Nadzieja Jankowska (Yelena Dimotrova), that the place is haunted by two ghosts-the Little Man of Marsh Firs and the Lady in Blue-and that her family line was accursed centuries ago when ancestor Roman Jankowska denied the hand of his daughter to King Stach, whose ghost now rides with those of thirteen horsemen to drag Jankowska offspring and their servants to death in the surrounding marshes…Read More »

  • Larisa Shepitko – Voskhozhdeniye AKA The Ascent (1977)

    1971-1980DramaLarisa ShepitkoUSSRWar

    Two Soviet partisans on a mission to gather food contend with the winter cold, the occupying Germans, and their own psyches.

    Letterboxd review by Lara Pop ★★★★½:
    It rarely gets bleaker than The Ascent. Larisa Shepitko’s tale of perseverance in the face of imminent death surprised me on several counts. For the first half of the movie, I couldn’t figure out the significance of the title. If anything, Shepitko presents its exact opposite. The barren, snow-covered landscape, where death lurks in every grinding step man takes, devours the movie in its all-consuming white death. The shaky camera movement enhances every sound made in the white silence as the camera zooms in on man’s face and outlines the thin crust of ice scratching his cheek with its cold tendrils, stretching, reaching, with one goal in mind: to get to the innermost layer: the spirit; and to break it. It is a tableau of a frostbitten feast, an icy infusion of a deathly descent, straight into the vein. I couldn’t figure out why I was watching a film named its exact opposite.Read More »

  • Vladimir Bortko – Sobache serdtse AKA Heart of a Dog (1988)

    1981-1990ComedySci-FiUSSRVladimir Bortko

    Professor Preobrazhensky and his colleague place some human parts into a dog named Sharik. Soon the dog transforms into a human.

    Quote:
    This movie (and yes, it’s a movie – it was shot as a two-parter, but the two parts together come down to slightly more than 2 hours) is one of the unsung masterpieces of world cinema. A very well-mannered, and yet at the same time absolutely savage denunciation of the Soviet regime and the type of person who flourished under it, the film is a faithful adaptation of the long-banned eponymous book by Mikhail Bulgakov. Read More »

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