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The Restless Garden

Summer 1991. The last days of the Soviet Empire. Dark clouds gathered over Moscow as the Soviet government prepared to turn back the clock of history. While the world focused on the crashing Soviet Empire, this film focuses on the people who would've been among the first to suffer repression - the women and men who have broken sexual taboos in a consummate act of liberation against a rigid, crippled world. This is a view from their vantage point, unveiling the shadow-side of Soviet culture in the wake of the revolution, where the real provocative nudity is the nakedness of the soul.

The Restless Garden

4.7 1993
The Cimmerian Hermit

He became a legend in his own lifetime. A Symbolist poet, artist, photographer, art historian, translator, lecturer, and local historian — Maximilian Voloshin, known simply as Max. Everyone loved him, and he loved everyone. He embodied contradictions. He visited the Vatican, the Prado, and the Louvre, witnessed the first car rallies and flying machines, attended Silver Age poetry circles and Montmartre artist gatherings, and took part in literary hoaxes. But no matter where he went, he always returned to Feodosia.

The Cimmerian Hermit

NR 1992
The White Sky

A glance across the border in northern Russia, where the small town of Montegorsk suffers under the heavy metal from industry. Nature is transformed into a poisonous desert: in long shots the camera probes the pale, skeleton-like branches of the dead trees. The small family, whose everyday life Helke and Suutari follow, lives in a state of waiting: waiting for the next German car, the next medical examination, the next holidays. White Sky exemplifies the artists‘ approach with currents of time flowing together: no one can say how long it will take for nature to regenerate itself here; yet people live here in their own time, with their own individual wishes and expectations.

The White Sky

7.5 1998
Pavel and Lyalya (A Jerusalem Romance)

“Like the right and left hand Your soul is close to my soul We are sealed shut, blissfully and warmly, Like the right and left wing…” The life and art of Pavel Kogan and Lyudmila Stanukinas, two famous Leningrad documentary filmmakers, can best be expressed by the Tsvetaeva stanza cited above. They are the main characters of this film, which their student Viktor Kossakovsky shot during Pavel Kogan’s final months. For Lyudmila Stanukinas, Lyalya, as those close to her called her, her husband was her only reason for existence. She was with him until the end and held onto his extinguishing life as much as she could.

Pavel and Lyalya (A Jerusalem Romance)

10.0 1998
Cursed and Forgotten

Sergei Govorukhin, son of well known Soviet and Russian film director Stanislav Govorukhin, was a Russian scriptwriter and war correspondent. This is his first and only documentary, dealing with his feelings about the first war he covered - the first Chechen war - as well as his very cynical view of Russian society during this time. These feelings and opinions were shared by many other war correspondents and cameramen at the time. The author used heavily contrasting footage and sound to illustrate his point of the indifference of 90's/early 2000's Russian society towards the conflicts it found itself in after the Second World War.

Cursed and Forgotten

NR 1999
Wednesday

Victor Kossakovsky searched obsessively for inhabitants of St. Petersburg who were born on Wednesday 19 July 1961, his own birthday, in former Leningrad. Fifty-one women and fifty men fitted the profile. In the course of time a few of these 101 people had died, others had moved to another community or abroad. But in 1995 Kossakovsky managed to capture on film all seventy remaining residents, in the street, at work or simply at home. While doing so he spent time with doctors and patients, entertainers and businessmen, construction workers and homeless people. In his unorthodox style Kossakovsky has produced a beautiful profile of people in their thirties in St. Petersburg.

Wednesday

7.4 1997
Pictures From the Provincial Comic’s Life

When the ambitious dream of a guy from the province about an acting career collides with a cruel reality, most often there is a drama or tragedy. The plot of the film is based on the traditional conflict for the Russian provincial theater: everyone dreams of the role of Hamlet. But if a person is a comedian by nature? What kind of play will the dramaturgy of life push him into? In the credits, the film is designated as "a tragicomedy from the life of artists."

Pictures From the Provincial Comic’s Life

NR 1997
Two and One

A saxophonist musician falls in love with an aerialist from the circus. For her sake, he gives up music, to which he has been devoted all his life. In order to be together with the woman he loves all the time, he becomes an aerialist and does a joint circus act with her. The number is gaining international recognition. But it was the joint work in the circus that was the beginning of the destruction of their family. At a time when the greatest desire of the heroes - to be together - has been achieved, another woman appears in their life…

Two and One

NR 1999
A Night at Paradjanov's Museum

The film is a unique tribute of the director to his master. The space is empty, in the sense, there are no people there, but the items live their peculiar life until the rooster cries out. And that is be the rooster Parajanov made, God knows of what kind of improvised material at hand. It feels like the wind is a night walker here and it turns over the pages of the books. Glass breaking can be heard. The good thing is there are enough collages made of phials and luxurious tableware set fragments. The dolls sit on the frames, letting their legs hang, just like they do in daytime, but something mystical, something fateful appears in them. And Parajanov is close, built-into some other life, in epaulets or even with the people of past epochs. The lamps are switched on, even the oil stoves – everything is the way Parajanov liked. But then it is daybreak already, the rooms are filled with sunlight, and everything changes.

A Night at Paradjanov's Museum

NR 1998
Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography

A free film adaptation of the director's memoirs. In form, this is the "stream of consciousness" that attracted Sergei Eisenstein after getting acquainted with the experiments of James Joyce. The outer outline of the film is a long foreign trip of the director, which began in 1929, during which he recalls his past life and considers creative ideas. The film is constructed as a free alternation of reality, dreams, and fantasies. The material for it is fragments from the films of Sergei Eisenstein and his fellow contemporaries, documentary footage depicting the director and his time. The wide coverage of the faces and events reflected in the film shows the special role of Sergei Eisenstein in the culture of the twentieth century…

Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography

8.7 1996
Good News

The "Good News" is a film dedicated to one of the main holidays of Orthodox Christians: the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos. The main idea of this holiday is the beginning of the liberation of the human race from sins and eternal death, the joyful news about the upcoming birth of Jesus Christ. The film shows how people living in the remote Russian village are preparing for the Annunciation, marking the turning point of winter and the beginning of field work. Everyday details of the parish community life help to feel Russian Orthodox customs that have been formed for centuries.

Good News

NR 1994