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Alexander Nevsky
DVD.
1932. 108 min. Russian/English subtitles. RF
036
Sergei Eisenstein's first sound film, with a brilliant
music score by Sergei Prokofiev, in a new,
meticulous print and new sound recording of this masterpiece.
Andreď Rublev
VHS.
1966. 185 mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF 001
Andrei Tarkovsky
The dazzling and harrowing tale of the 15th century
icon painter who survives the cruelties of medieval
Russia to create works of art. As bloody Tartar raids,
religious brutality, and pagan rites work to quell
Rublev's desires and needs, he undertakes a spiritual
odyssey that affirms man's ability to transcend
adversity.
Beregis' Avtomobilia
(Beware of the Car)
VHS.
TV film. Russian, no subtitles.
RF 023
A comedy about a troupe of amateur actors who
perform Shakespeare's Hamlet with
a mystery
adventure complete with car chase and hilarious
excitement.
Brat (brat)
VHS
MESECAM.1997. 95 min. Russian, no subtitles.
RF 014
Alexei Babanov / Sergei Bodrov
A simple man returns from his army service, coming
home to St. Petersburg, where he finds his brother is
now a contract killer for the Russian mob. Soon, both
brothers are in the service of organized crime and they
team up to kill a Chechen mafia boss. This riveting
crime film addresses the social breakdown and
accepted grimness of city life in the former
Soviet Union.
The Brothers Karamazov
(Lost)
VHS.1957.
147mn. English. RF 010
Richard Brooks / Yul Brynner, Maria Schell,
Claire Bloom and Lee J. Cobb.
Lavish production of the Dostoevsky novel.
Burnt by the Sun
VHS.
1994. 134 min. Russian/English subtitles. RF
032
Nikita Mikhalkov / Nikita Mikhalkov
Wonderfully intimate, Chekhovian idyll set in Stalinist
Russia which, at its conclusion, packs an explosive
political climax. A legendary revolutionary hero living in
a dacha outside Moscow with family and friends. Most
of the film's complex relationships are seen
through the innocent eyes of Mikhalkov's (and the
hero's) beautiful daughter in a film that gently reveals
the tragedy of living under Stalinism.
Chujaya Igra // Okno v Parke
VHS.
TV films. Russian, no subtitles. RF 025
In the first film, an older brother returns from "city life"
to the country where his younger brother lives a simple
life. He brings with him his problems from the city
(mafia) and his younger brother, a martial artist, helps
him to conquer his problems.
The
second film is a comedy about the trials and
tribulations of a musician after he moves to Paris to
begin teaching in a school for Russian children.
Circus
VHS.
1936. 89 mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF 002
Grigori Alexandrov / Lyubov Orlova
Daring attempt to import the American musical comedy
form into the Soviet Union was conceived by its director
as "an eccentric comedy...a real side-splitter." Its star
is an American
circus artiste who has
a black baby--a
daring concept for 1936! The only way she can find
happiness is among the Soviet people.
The Color of Pomegranates / Paradjanov
DVD.
1969. 88 min. / 1994. 57 min.
Russian/English subtitles. RF 038
This disc includes director Sergei Paradjanov's
best-known masterwork, an excellent documentary
about the filmmaker, as well as an early short by this
major figure in world cinema. The Color of
Pomegranates is presented here in its complete,
director's cut (for years it was only available in a
censored version). It is an aesthetically daring work
that violated the Soviet Union's codes for "socialist
realism" and against "religious sentiment" that was
banned in its homeland and was largely responsible for
the director's prison sentence years later. A poetic
evocation of the life of 18th
century Armenian poet
Sayat Nova, it is widely considered one of the most
important works of Russian cinema.
Paradjanov:
A Requiem, features rare interviews with
the director and clips from his work in an absorbing
portrait of the artist, dissident, romantic and iconoclast.
In English and Russian with
Hagop Hovnatanian
is
Paradjanov's short film about the Armenian painter,
filled with magical imagery and a deeply spiritual
undertone.
The Cranes are Flying
VHS. 1960. 95mn.
Russian/English subtitles. RF 004
Mikhail Kalatozov / Tatiana Samoilova, Alexei Batalov
A film that marked a radical opening for Soviet cinema;
the lighthearted, romantic, lyrical story of a beautiful
young girl caught up in the horrors of war. When her
fiance goes off to war, she marries a man whom she
does not love and who raped her, is evacuated to
Siberia, and after the war, learns of her fiance's death.
But she refuses to believe it and waits for his return.
Eugene Onegin
VHS.
1958. 106 mn.
Sung in Russian/ English subtitles. RF 031
Freeze, Die, Come to Life
VHS.
1990. 105mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF 003
Vitaly Kanevski / Pavel Nazarov, Dinara Drukarova,
Yelena Popova
A brilliant Soviet film about the brutal conditions of life
in and around Stalinist labor camps as seen through
the eyes of two remarkable children. Kanevsky's first
feature is based on some of his own experiences
during the eight years he spent growing up outside
such a camp.
Hamlet (Gamlet )
VHS
MESECAM. 1964. 140 min.
Russian, no subtitles. RF 015
Heart of a Dog (
sobah;e serdce )
VHS
MESECAM. 1988. 129 mi.
Russian, no subtitles. RF 016
Ironiia Sudby (Irony of Fate)
VHS.
TV film. Russian, no subtitles. RF 021
Yeldar Ryanov
A young couple engaged to be married plan to meet in
Moscow on New Year's Day, but in his celebration,
the groom-to-be gets drunk and passes out. His friends
mix up his plane ticket and he flies to Stalingrad
instead. Because the architecture is so similar he
does not realize the mistake. He tries to go to
his own apartment , but it is actually the home of a
complete stranger.
The Lady with the Dog
VHS.
1960. 89 min. Russian/English subtitles. RF
035
Joseph Heifitz / Iya Savvina, Alexei Batalov.
A bored, married banker from Moscow meets a young
married woman while on vacation in Yalta at the
beginning of the century. They drift into an affair yet the conventions of
society force them to return to their old
lives. They meet again but cannot find the strength to
break with their pasts. Adapted from Chekhov's classic
short story.
The Legend of Suram Fortress/ Ashik Kerib
DVD.1985.
89 mn. /1988. 75 mn. RF 027
Sergei Paradjanov's last two narrative features
(co-directed with Dodo Abashidze) show the great
Russian director's remarkable ability to create
unforgettable images from timeless stories of the past.
The Legend of Suram Fortress (1984, USSR, 89 mins.)
is a surreal tale, based on Georgian legend, about a
failing defensive stronghold that can only be saved by
a warrior's sacrifice. "Dazzling...replete with richness
and splendor" (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times). In
Georgian with English subtitles. Ashik Kerib
(1988, USSR, 75 mins.) is based on a 19th century
fable about a wandering minstrel pursuing the woman
he loves. "Wildly beautiful...told with affection, humor
and style"
Little Vera
VHS.
1988. 110 mn.Russian/English subtitles. RF 005
Vassili Pitchul / Natalya Negoda
The film that took Russia by storm and then sent a
second shock wave when its young star posed
nude for Playboy. Negoda plays Vera, the sullen,
sultry teenager who's torn between her brooding
husband and her bitter parents in a dead-end town.
With its simmering sensuality and brutal candor, Little
Vera is a seductive Russian film that gave the Russians
(and Americans) something which they never expected
--a truly fresh film about sexual relationships.
Luna Park
VHS.
Russian/English subtitles. RF 006
Pavel Lounguine /
A gang of young, tough skinheads make their mark in
the chaotic turmoil of post-Communist Russia, where
right-wing extremists of all sorts abound. This
iron-pumping gang, led by its crazed leader, knows no
limits in its terrifying effort to purify the nation. It's a
rollercoaster ride
of an action film in the tradition
of Mad Max.
The Matrix
VHS
MESECAM.131 min.
Russian, no subtitles. RF 013
Artificial intelligence machinery has taken over the
world and it's up to Keanu Reeves to try and save
what's left of reality.
The Mirror
DVD.1974.
106 mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF 028
Andrei tarkovsky
Tarkovsky's looking glass is not merely cracked but
shattered, and we see the jagged, jumbled reflections
of its shards, images of the director's childhood mixed
with fragments of his adult life--a child's wartime exile,
a mother's experience with political terror, the breakup
of a marriage, life in a country home--all intermingled
with slow motion dream sequences and stark newsreel.
Moskovskaia Liubov // Jenir iz
Mayami
VHS.
TV film. RF 024
Moscow Parade
VHS.
1993. 103 mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF
029
Ivan Dykhovichny / Ute Lemper
The first post-Soviet film about the Stalin era. In 1939,
she is a young aristocrat married to a hateful chief of
the secret police. His forces have murdered her family
but she takes advantage of her marriage to enjoy all
the luxuries her present lifestyle allows. When she
meets a mysterious man and learns of his plans to
paint a horse black, her life is thrown into a whirlwind
of change.
Obyknovennoe Chudo (An Ordinary miracle)
VHS.
TV film. RF 022
Mark Zakharov
A comic fairy tale about a magician who turns a bear
into a man to fill his idle time. If the transformed bear is
kissed by a princess, he will again become a bear.
The bear likes being human and doesn't want to meet a princess.
Oblomov
VHS.
1979. 142 min. Russian/English subtitles. RF
033
Nikita Mikhalkov
A beautiful adaptation of the famous Ivan Goncharov
novel. Oblomov owns 350 serfs he's never met, and just
lies on his back in a St. Petersburg apartment,
sleeping, eating, sleeping some more, watching his
finances dwindle and whining at his servant for not
being sensitive enough. A detailed, beautifully
photographed film.
Repentance
VHS.
1988. 151mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF 007
Tengiz Abuladze / Avtandil Makharadze, Iya Ninidze
A pivotal breakthrough, post-Glasnost film from
Georgia; a brilliant visual representation of the Soviet
trauma. Dreams, nightmares and absurdist comedy
mix in this allegory of the mayor of a small Georgian
village who won't stay dead. This tragic phantasmagoria
blends surrealist dreams, magic and doublespeak
("It is hard to catch a black cat in a dark room.
Especially if
there is no cat.")
in an Orwellian depiction
of the Soviet "wonderland.
The Rise of Catherine the Great
VHS.
1934. 88mn. English. RF 011
Paul Czinner / Douglas Fairbanks
Unrequited love and romantic shallowness in this tale
of the Empress of Russia and her failing
marriage to
the Grand Duke while her obsession for an apparently
royal madman is vanquished by society and royal
indifference.
Russian cartoons
VHS.
RF 026
Sakharov
VHS.
1984. 58 mn. English. RF 012
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
VHS.
1964. 99mn.
Ukrainian/English subtitles. RF 008
Sergei Paradjanov / Ivan Nikolaichuk,
Larisa Kadochnikova
Brilliant, epic story of starcrossed lovers set against
the ethnographic panorama of the Carpathian
Mountains. The film is a visual
tour-de-force of
symbols, metaphor, lyrical photography and active
camera as it interweaves myth and narrative into an
elliptical, seamless work of art. Its images "become
superimposed on the mind, and will emerge later with
a new and more profound meaning, a meaning that
escapes logical analysis, that cannot be grasped
intellectually, but which calls upon us to respond with
feeling" (Robert Walke).
Solaris
VHS.
1971. 167 mn. Russian/English subtitles. RF
030
Andrei Tarkovsky
The release of this remarkable science fiction film
marked a milestone in Soviet cinema. Solaris, adapted
from the science fiction novel by respected Polish
writer Stanislav Lem, is one of those rare screen works
which improves upon and deepens its literary source.
The story deals with a series of expeditions to the
planet Solaris--closely examining the ways the various
earth scientists there interact among themselves and,
more importantly, the ways in which they interact with
each other's memories.
The Stars' Caravan
DVD.
2000. 60 min.
Kygyrstani+Russian/English subtitles. RF 037
Arto Halonen (Belgium/Czech Republic
/Finland production)
Prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union,
appointed projectionists would travel by foot or on
horseback to hold special screenings of propaganda
films and other approved movies for the people of
Kyrgyzstan. Rather than opening up doors for more
cinema, the collapse of communism left the
struggling population of the former Soviet Republic with
an almost non-existent film industry, as what had been
there before was entirely state supported. The Stars'
Caravan documents the efforts of one lone projectionist
to carry on the old tradition, delivering the magic of
movies to an audience hungry for cinema.
Taxi Blues
VHS.
1990. 110mn.
Russian/English subtitles. RF 009
Pavel Lounguine / Piotr Mamonov and Piotr Zaitchenko
Critique of contemporary Soviet society, captured
through the bleak and paternalistic relationship of a hard-drinking, fascist,
anti-Semitic taxi driver and a
dependent, alcoholic Jewish saxophonist.
Tiurmenii Romans (Prison Love Affair)
VHS.
TV film. 70 min. RF 020
A detective has spent 6 months trying to crack a
difficult case and has still not succeeded in getting a
prisoner to talk. The prisoner still holds the secret to
the whereabouts of stolen hard currency.
Volga Volga
VHS. 1937. 90
min.
Russian/English subtitles. RF 034
Grigori Alexandrov / Igor Ilinsky, Lyubov
Orlova
An unseen miracle of 1930's Soviet cinema, Volga
Volga is a revelation--a classic musical comedy that
catapulted Lyubov Orlova into a Russian mega star.
The setting is a giant steamboat making its way up the
Volga River. On board is a motley collection of amateur
singers and dancers travelling to Moscow to take part
in a musical contest.
Winnie the Pooh (
Vinni-Pux )
VHS
MESECAM. 1998. 40 min. Cartoon.
Russian, no subtitles. RF 017
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