‘Countries’ Archives
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 [...]
12:08 East of Bucharest
Last night I reacquainted myself with Corneliu Poromboiu's delightful 12:08 East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-a fost?, 2006), a practically zero-budget Romanian comedy that scores spectacular value for money in the laughs department. I'd previously seen it last year, when it opened the Sarajevo Film Festival, screening in a gigantic open-air venue [...]
Five Borowczyk Shorts
One of the occupational hazards of studying central and eastern European cinema is actually getting to see many of the films in the first place - especially when moving off the beaten track and exploring short and animated films. Things have significantly improved thanks to the DVD revolution, but rights and materials availability and [...]
Inside the Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer
If you're at a very loose end next Wednesday (13th), I'll be part of a four-strong panel discussing the work of Jan Švankmajer at BFI Southbank, along with: Suzanne Buchan, head of the Animation Research Centre at University College for the Creative Arts (her piece 'Shifting Realities: The Brothers Quay Between Live Action and Animation' is [...]
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 [...]
The Cremator
Last Thursday, I was asked to introduce a student screening of Juraj Herz's gleefully macabre 1968 film The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol), having already written about Second Run's DVD for Sight & Sound (the distributor helpfully provides a facsimile here). This is roughly how it went: I've been asked to introduce The Cremator, partly because I [...]
Elégia
Hungary, 1965, colour, 18 minsTucked away amongst the extras of Mokep's DVD of Zoltán Huszárik's extraordinary Szindbad (1971) is his first short film, the dialogue and narrative-free Elégia (1965), or Elegy.It's an 18-minute cine-poem about horses, first shown running carefree across a wide, grassy puszta, or Hungarian plain, before becoming [...]
Polanski Gallery
Here's a link to the BFI's Polanski Gallery, with text by yours truly, assembled for an NFT retrospective back in 2005 or thereabouts. I'm hoping to write more about Polanski's early work on Kinoblog, but this will have to do for now. (and here are direct links to the pages on the early Polish shorts, and his debut feature Knife in the Water)
Innocent Sorcerers
As part of my ongoing research into the extensive back catalogue of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema, I watched the Facets/Polart DVD of his 1960 film Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje) last night. It made for a fascinating contrast with his usual work. It was his fifth feature, but his first set in the (then) present, [...]