‘Russia’ Archives
The East End Film Festival
The 2009 East End Film Festival launches tomorrow - in the words of the organisers:The East End Film Festival showcases hot new talent and homegrown films alongside larger independent releases and special events, informing and inspiring a new generation of filmmakers and audiences from across London and beyond, and raising the profile of this [...]
Short Animated World
I've just discovered the Short Animated World blog, dedicated to chronicling all 100 entries on the recent Annecy Film Festival/Studio Magazine/Variety poll of thirty animation historians to establish the best animated films of all time. There's no original critical material, but each entry offers links and - in most cases - a streaming copy of [...]
Senses of Cinema
The latest edition of online journal Senses of Cinema has several lengthy articles devoted to aspects of central and eastern European cinema, including: Sweet Movie: The Gentle Side of "Destructive Art" by Dušan Makavejev The World Tasted: Dušan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie by Lorraine Mortimer Slovak Cinema of the 1970s Revisited by Peter [...]
Best Foreign Film Oscar shortlist announced
The Best Foreign Film Oscar shortlist has been whittled down to nine titles, with three of the nominations going to Eastern European films. Predictably, Wajda's Katyń is still on the list, though there's a surprise in that Cristian Mungiu's masterly 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile) has been dropped in favour of Sergei [...]
Best Foreign Film Oscar longlist announced
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a record 63 films are on the initial longlist for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. The full list is here, and these are the Central and Eastern European submissions: Azerbaijan: Caucasia (d. Farid Gumbatov) Bosnia and Herzegovina: It's Hard to Be Nice/Teško je biti fin (d. Srđan Vuletić) - [...]
Old Khottabych
Старик Хоттабыч Lenfilm, USSR, 1956, colour, 86 mins Director: Gennady Kazansky Writers: Lazar Lagin (based on his novel) Camera: Muzakir Shurukov Design: Isaak Kaplan, Berta Manevich Music: Nadezhda Simonyan Cast: Nikolai Volkov (Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Khottab), Alexei Litvinov (Volka), Gennadi Khudyakov (Zhenya), Lev [...]
The Cold Summer of 1953
Холодное лето пятьдесят третьего Mosfilm, USSR, 1988, colour, 100 mins Director: Alexander Proshkin Writer: Edgar Dubrovsky Camera: Boris Brozhovsky Editing: Yelena Mikhailova Design: Valery Filippov Music: Vladimir Martynov Cast: Valery Priyomykhov (Sergei Basargin, 'Chaff'), Anatoly Papanov [...]
Vassilisa the Beautiful
Василиса Прекрасная USSR, 1939, black and white, 72 minsThe second film by director Alexander Row (1906-1973), who throughout his four-decade career specialised almost exclusively in fairytale fantasies (long after they were dismissed as the second-class citizens of Soviet cinema), Vassilisa the Beautiful is based on a famous [...]