Russian

  • Andrey Chernykh – Avstriyskoe pole AKA Austrian Field (1991)

    1991-2000Andrey ChernykhArthouseDramaUSSR
    Avstriyskoe pole (1991)
    Avstriyskoe pole (1991)

    The action takes place in a strange world of human relationships and broken relationships. And, perhaps best of all it focuses a person who is blind from birth. The film – the story of his dramatic love of a beautiful young woman.Read More »

  • Grigoriy Kozintsev & Iosif Shapiro – Korol Lir AKA King Lear (1970)

    Grigori Kozintsev1961-1970ArthouseEpicUSSRWilliam Shakespeare
    Korol Lir (1970)
    Korol Lir (1970)

    King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear’s loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about his faithful son Edgar. Madness and tragedy befall both ill-starred fathers.Read More »

  • Aleksei Sidorov – Brigada AKA The Brigade (2002)

    2001-2010Aleksei SidorovCrimeRussiaTV
    Brigada (2002)
    Brigada (2002)

    SYNOPSIS
    Being the most notorious TV-product of post-Soviet Russia, “Brigada” is an epic story about a company of bosom friends that, step by step, is transformed, leading by ambitions and social conditions, to the high class gang with excessive economical and, even, policitcal purposes (or, one can say, appetites). The regular, form-building, undisguised, even pushy alternation of brutal and sentimental scenes especially excited the audience. Supporters (and, also, authors theirselves) pointed out the classical tradition of gangster sagas, while opponents accused this serial as a cynical exploitation of most primitive fears-‘n’-hopes of common people and forewarned about dangerous social consequences (indeed, many children began to play in “brigades” on city streets with all their ingenuousness). The very title “Brigada” became a kind of symbol of over-effective media product that doesn’t worry about moral; main actor Sergey Bezrukov immediately became the superstar of Russian popular culture.Read More »

  • Stepan Andranikyan – Nevesta solntsa AKA The Bride of the Sun (1972)

    1971-1980AnimationArmeniaShort FilmStepan Andranikyan
    Nevesta solntsa (1972)
    Nevesta solntsa (1972)

    The first movie to be directed by Stepan Andranikyan, better known as Sergei Parajanov’s art director. Based on a story by Andranikyan’s neighbour, it was originally meant to be entirely wordless, but officials insisted he add a narrative poem explaining the story about the love between Astghik, the star of the night, and the young sun Vahagn.

    Sources differ on the year of release, with Armenian ones (including Kinodaran) saying 1971 and Russian ones (including animator.ru) saying 1972. It won 2nd prize in the animation category at the All-Union Film Festival in Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR, 1973.Read More »

  • Marcus Lenz & Mila Teshaieva – When Spring Came to Bucha (2022)

    Marcus Lenz2021-2030DocumentaryUkraine
    When Spring Came to Bucha (2022)
    When Spring Came to Bucha (2022)

    Quote:
    Locals emerge from their shelters, corpses are lying in the streets of Bucha. The trauma is clear to see. But life needs to go on. At first, all is despair-But these Ukrainians reveal their resilience.Russians bombarded Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin and other cities in the region following their invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. By the time they retreated a month later, the damage was huge: buildings had been destroyed and there were corpses lying in the streets. Filmmakers Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz went in immediately, in time to film local people emerging from their shelters, but never showing the actual atrocities. That wasn’t necessary, as the trauma of war is clear to see on everyone’s faces, including those of the volunteers who rushed in from far and wide to help. Read More »

  • S. Fateev – Khronika Neob”yavlennoy Voyny (Pridnestrov’ye 1992) AKA Chronicle of the Undeclared War (Transnistria 1992) (1993)

    1991-2000DocumentaryS. FateevTransnistriaWar
    Khronika Neobyavlennoy Voyny (Pridnestrov'ye 1992)
    Khronika Neobyavlennoy Voyny (Pridnestrov’ye 1992)

    A glimpse of the Transnistrian conflict through the eyes of people who lived in that place at that time.Read More »

  • Georgiy Daneliya – Kin-dza-dza! (1986)

    Georgiy Daneliya1981-1990ComedySci-FiUSSR
    Kin dza dza! (1986)
    Kin dza dza! (1986)

    Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa SOLARIS directing Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and you’ll come close to the existential weirdness of the wonderfully loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy KIN-DZA-DZA!Two average Muscovites – a plainspoken construction foreman (Stanislav Lyubshin) and a Georgian violin student (Levan Gabriadze) – encounter an odd homeless man on the street who asks, “Tell me the number of your planet in the Tentura?”In a flash, they’re teleported across the universe to the planet Pluke in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy – a Tatooine-like desert world whose inhabitants are hilariously noncommunicative (their main words are “ku” for good and “kyu” for very bad) and where common wooden matches are tremendously valuable. A deadpan, absurdist mixture of Kurt Vonnegut, Monty Python, Samuel Beckett and Jodorowsky’s never-made Dune where alien cultures are even more haphazard and WTF? than our own, the film is also a savage satire of bureaucratic idiocy and dysfunction no matter what political system you’re living under – or what planet you’re living on.Read More »

  • Mikhail Kalatozov – Vikhri vrazhdebnye AKA The Hostile Whirlwinds (1953)

    Mikhail Kalatozov1951-1960DramaUSSR
    Vikhri vrazhdebnye (1953)
    Vikhri vrazhdebnye (1953)

    The movie narrates the first years of the formation of the Soviet power, concentrating on the life and activities of F. Dzerzhinsky in 1918-1925.

    In July 1918, as a result of a rebellion of the left SRs, the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach is killed. Felix Dzerzhinsky alone goes to the headquarters of the left SRs and anarchists, he manages to sway to his side the simple soldiers and sailors, participants of the mutiny, who in turn deal with their leaders.Read More »

  • Mikhail Kalatozov – Zagovor obrechyonnikh aka Conspiracy of the Doomed (1950)

    Mikhail Kalatozov1941-1950DramaPoliticsUSSR
    Zagovor obrechyonnykh (1950)
    Zagovor obrechyonnykh (1950)

    The film reflects the period of the “cold war” of the early 1950s. In one of the countries of Eastern Europe, the construction of a new state system comes up against active resistance. An anti-democratic conspiracy is maturing: at the instigation of the ambassador, an assassination attempt against the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic, the Communist Gannu Licht, is being organized. The Soviet Union helps the communists and detachments of armed workers arrest the conspirators.Read More »

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