Russian

A cheerful grim look at the follies of the twentieth century, anchored in Gogol’s proto-surrealist novella ‘The Nose’ and Shostakovich’s opera of the same name.Read More »

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As the clouds of war spread over Russia during Germany’s surprise invasion in 1941, the fervent young lovers, the sensitive Veronika and the stalwart Boris, are parted when the patriotic lad secretly volunteers for the war effort. During the following hard years, Veronika who serves her country as a wartime-nurse will lose communication with Boris, moreover, when a devastating air raid destroys her house and Boris’ father takes her in to live with the family, unexpectedly, things will take a turn for the worse. Before long, the worried fiancée will find herself dealing not only with the dark thoughts of Boris’ potential loss but also with the burden of an unwelcome decision. Once, the star-crossed lovers swore eternal devotion under a flock of flying cranes, still, a war is always cruel and eternally disastrous.Read More »

Twelve jurors must decide the fate of a Chechen adolescent charged with murdering his stepfather.Read More »

A lavish two-part costume tragedy based on the classic The Dowerless Girl by the nineteenth-century playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, A Cruel Romance (also known as Ruthless Romance) was the biggest Soviet box-office hit of 1984, though it seems to have had little international exposure until now.

It marked a change of direction for the veteran Eldar Ryazanov, who up to then had tended to specialise in contemporary comedy, though it seems to have done his career little harm: he was made a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union that year – and no wonder, quite apart from the film’s commercial success, its mostly wart-ridden portrait of the venal, money-grubbing bourgeoisie of the then-discredited Tsarist era must have gone down a storm with the Soviet authorities.Read More »

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Lash of the Czar was one of several English-language titles for the Russian film Belyi Orel. The film was based on The Governor, a play by Leonid Andreyev. V.I. Kachalov plays the governor of a small Russian province who tries to treat the people under his authority with kindness and equanimity. But when a local factory goes on strike, the governor buckles under to pressure from the Czar and orders the wholesale slaughter of the strikers. He pays for this betrayal of his trust with his life — at the hands of a courageous Bolshevik spy. Anna Sten, who in 1934 was brought to the U.S. as Sam Goldwyn’s “answer” to Greta Garbo, appears as the governor’s wife. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviRead More »

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The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun is the second film of Anton Vidokle’s trilogy on Russian cosmism, a metaphysical philosophy and cultural movement that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Russian scientists, intellectuals, artists, and revolutionaries, which speculated on the possibilities of space travel; the use of electromagnetic energies to enhance health, healing, and vitality; and prolonged human lifespan, immortality, and even resurrection. This film focuses specifically on the poetic dimension of the theories of Soviet biophysicist, Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1964), whose lifework involved the study of the effects of aero-ionization and cosmological fluctuations such as sunspots and solar flares on human health and behaviour.Read More »

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Can you find happiness in the big city? The young hat maker Natascha, who lives with her grandfather in a suburb covered in winter snow, has to commute by train from the village to Moscow to deliver her creations to the extravagant Irene’s hat shop. For the administration, Irene claims Natascha to be her subtenant in order to be able to have more living space. The clumsy railway official woos the lovely country girl with his ravishing smile. But she enters into a fictitious marriage with the provincial Ilya in order to get him a room in Moscow. With an apparently worthless lottery ticket, which Irene’s husband gives to Natascha, the entanglements become turbulent. Boris Barnet describes the contrasts between city and country and the new living conditions in Moscow in a stylish and socially critical way. Three great acting talents, Anna Stén, Iwan Kowal-Samborski and Vladimir Fogel, form the triangle of relationships. Originally ordered as a vehicle to advertise the State Lottery, the film made the studio rich and the natural talent director Boris Barnet famous as the founder of lyrical comedy.Read More »

This is Cosmos is the first film in a trilogy inspired by the ideas of Russian cosmism, which is a unique phenomenon that emerged in the late 19th century, bringing together religious, philosophical, scientific and aesthetic theories united by a common idea of cosmos as a universal order.

Drawing widely on poems, philosophical texts, scientific writings, academic papers, and historical studies from followers of Cosmism, Anton Vidokle has focused on the writings of philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, the founder of the movement. In creating his theories of the “Common Cause,” Fyodorov advocated for the development of scientific methods for the radical extension of life and the resurrection of the dead, believing that death was a mistake, “because the energy of cosmos is indestructible, because true religion is a cult of ancestors, because true social equality is immortality for all.”Read More »

The rich inner world of the renowned Georgian screenwriter, artist and puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze is as fantastic as the animation into which he has poured this story of his life. Rezo’s director son, Leo Gabriadze, who previously made the hit horror film Unfriended (2014), leaves it to his father to talk about a life suffused with magical thinking.

The movie is an autobiographical animated documentary questioning ideas of deep humanity, kindness and survival during the uneasy times after the 2nd World War.

Winner of Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.Read More »