USSR

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Colourful ‘optimistic tragedy’ of a poor family in Ukraine, living in the Carpathian mountains near the Romanian border, during the Second World War. Five sons of the family make up the village band, but as the battles between the Nazi-supported Ukranian nationalists and the Soviets go on, their band loses one player after another.

Winner of the Grand prize at the 1971 Moscow Film Festival, White Bird with a Black Mark is set in western Ukraine, in an area that has passed through the control of several nations over the centuries. despairing at the poverty of is family, a boy decides the stork is the cause of all their problems, and sets out to kill it. But soon everyone’s situation will be challenged, as World War II breaks out and the region is carved into warring battle zones, with brother being forced to fight against brother. Yuri Illienko once again brings his dazzling poetic vision to this tale of loyalty to family, to nation, to state—and to oneself. The film is widely considered one of the most important works of the Ukrainian film heritage.Read More »

Synopsis:

A gentle, bittersweet tragicomedy, Autumn Marathon is about a middle-aged translator, Andrei Buzykin (Oleg Basilashvili), whose almost pathological niceness has trapped him in a seemingly endless series of awkward situations: his inability to turn anyone down has left him juggling a wife and mistress, on top of vast amounts of additional work usually done as unpaid favours for friends and students that’s constantly interfering with his own projects to the point where his career is put at risk.

And because he can’t bear to hurt anyone, he’s always taking the easy way out – which invariably means constructing a vast edifice of lies that he can’t possibly keep track of, which has the equally inevitable side-effect of turning a fundamentally decent if weak-willed man into what looks like the epitome of a philandering boor. Half the time, his excuses are entirely genuine – he really did help his Danish friend Bill Hansen (Norbert Kuchinke) at a drying-out clinic, and stayed up all night with his less talented colleague Varvara (Galina Volchek) to help her on a difficult translation, but this counts for little when he’s so widely disbelieved. The title refers to his regular early morning jogging sessions with Bill – again, he’d much rather be doing something else, like staying in bed, but how can he possibly say no?Read More »

Synopsis:
A collage of documentary and chronicle footage from various German and Soviet archives, attempting to reconstruct the experience of the citizens of the Third Reich and to grasp the essence of totalitarian regime. The footage is accompanied by director’s commentary, analyzing the imagery.

Romm’s “Ordinary Fascism” pulls out all the stops in its selection of documentary material to draw the viewer not only into absolute horror about fascism and nazism in the 1920s-1940s Europe, but also to a firmest of convictions that nothing of the sort should be allowed to happen again anywhere in the world. The film was released in 1965, in the Soviet Union’s heyday at the height of the great societal and intellectual “thaw” that followed the Stalin’s death and the denunciation of Stalin’s totalitarianism by Nikita Khruschev. Never explicitly mentioning any of them explicitly, the film targets tyranny and despotism no matter what form they may take.Read More »

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The 1975 film by Georgi Daneliya “Afonya” was an unexpected commercial hit in USSR. The main character Borshev A.N. is a locksmith who spends his free time, as well as working hours, drinking with his buddies whom he even doesn’t recognize the next day after another heavy drink. His wife leaves him, his boss places him on probation, his whole life is falling a part but he doesn’t realize it. There is only one person who can save him – nurse Katya whom he met on dances and didn’t pay much attention to… Daneliya manages to balance in the film satire and drama, quotes from the film gained a cult status in Russia and other former countries of USSR.Read More »

Mimino is a Georgian helicopter pilot, carrying all sort of stuff (humans, animals, objects… and movies) to and from the isolated villages in the astoundingly beautiful Georgian valleys.

His dream is to become a jet pilot, traveling the world and enjoying the company of nice hostesses, and for this reason he moves to Moskva aiming to obtain his promotion. While in Moskva orchestrating his way to meet Aeroflot executives, he stumbles on an Armenian truck driver with whom he’ll have to share struggles in the big metropolis.Read More »

A 1962 Soviet black-and-white drama film directed by Mikhail Romm about nuclear particle physics, Soviet scientists
(physicists) and their relationship. The film won the Crystal Globe Award in 1962.

Plot:
Two young physicists, an afflicted experimenter Dmitri Gusev (Batalov) and a sceptical physicist-theorist Ilya Kulikov (Smoktunovsky) carry out nuclear researches at a Siberian research institute. Dmitri heads the researches begun by his teacher Sintsov who as a result of experiment had received a deadly dose of radiation. Gusev is irradiated also. Doctors warn that any more radiation will kill him. At that time his friend Ilya and Lyolya who loved Dmitri developed a romantic relationship. The enamoured couple prepares for a wedding and look for a possibility to inform Dmitri about it. When they meet, Dmitri already suspects this and coldly received Lyolya and Ilya. Lyolya is caught up in self-contradictions, and as she tries to establish his true feelings for her she learns about the terrible diagnosis. Realising that she still loves Dmitri, Lyolya cancels her wedding to Kulikov and weds Gusev.Read More »

Mike Pinsky, DVDVerdict wrote:
Russian film poet Evgeni Bauer combined the technical virtuosity of D.W. Griffith with the haunting terror of Edgar Allan Poe and the artist’s eye of Johannes Vermeer. He is — perhaps — the greatest film director you have never heard of. During his brief four-year career, Evgeni Bauer created macabre masterpieces. They are dramas darkly obsessed with doomed love and death, astonishing for their graceful camera movements, risqué themes, opulent sets and chiaroscuro lighting. Tragically, Bauer died in 1917, succumbing to pneumonia after breaking his leg.Read More »

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One day, four sorcerers appeared out of the blue in the streets of a small town. These evil old people had long been dreaming of getting back their former vigor and youth. But to do that, they had to find people who would aimlessly waste their time. And they were very lucky: four schoolchildren had proved ideal guinea pigs for the magicians. The kids and the old people changed their roles for a while. You can’t even imagine what happened! The schoolchildren had to hide for some time in an abandoned house on the outskirts of the town – they just couldn’t appear before their parents as bearded, bent, old persons. Meanwhile, the sorcerers had their fun at school in the guise of their victims. And only on a certain day and at a certain hour, time could be turned back again…
ruscicoRead More »

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Two 14-year-olds experience the first pangs of romantic love in the midst of their last moments of childhood. Sensitively told, this film conveys a sense of life as it is lived among that age-group, and is unusual because it does not bear a heavy party stamp. This is the first feature film for director {$Dinara Asanova}, who was much-respected in the Soviet Union for making realistic films about young people. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »