Tag: USSR

November 20, 2023 / Documentary

A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna’s life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.

November 19, 2023 / Animation
June 19, 2023 / Experimental

An old man meditates by the sea. A little girl is building a sandcastle. A young couple is frolicking on the beach. The day fades into the evening, as do the memories of youth. Pika päeva ehavalgus (The Light of a Long Day) is a poetic short film about the course of life, shot on 16mm. It won medals at amateur film festivals in Yugoslavia, Austria, Finland, Lithuania and the Baltic Union Republics for the humanistic treatment of the subject and the best directorial and acting work.

December 11, 2022 / Arthouse
December 9, 2022 / Experimental

This film of constructivist composition, shot in Moscow in 1987 depicts a series of maps of tramway electrical wire networks framed by the sky, shot from below. Sometimes the top of a tram slides along the frame. The distances between the electrical cables across from the video camera introduce subtle contrasting variations between the black lines that streak the neutral field, reducing the city to a geometric and dynamic construction.

July 9, 2022 / Animation
May 17, 2022 / Documentary
March 10, 2022 / Arthouse

Filmed in 1965 and just as contemporary now as it was then, Yuri Ilyenko’s directorial debut, A SPRING FOR THE THIRSTY, is a surreal cinematic poem from the cinematographer of Sergei Paradzhanov’s SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS. As director-cinematographer of A SPRING FOR THE THIRSTY, Ilyenko has created a parable centering on an old man who lives a secluded life in the desert, alone with only his memories and photographs. His wellspring, once a source of joy and hope for thirsty passersby, is now rarely used. No longer able to find comfort in his memories, he turns all his photographs to face the walls.