Serious film production was not established in Russia until 1908, so 2008 marks its centenary. To commemorate this anniversary, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, together with Seagull Films and Concern Mosfilm, mounted Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking, an impressive series of films produced by Mosfilm, the largest and most productive film studio during the Soviet era and Russia's most important film institution today, which screened at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York earlier this year. (Visit seagullfilms.com for more information.)
“Started as the state film factory, at its height, Mosfilm was the USSR's Hollywood, creating and hosting the most popular stars, producing the most lavish productions and generally setting the pace for the rest of Soviet cinema,» writes series curator Richard Pena, who continues, “Eisenstein, Romm, Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Konchalovsky, and Shepitko all created masterpieces there, while the extraordinary range of Russian film production is showcased in classics, Soviet musicals, action/adventure ‘Easterns’ and more.”
Cornell Cinema will only be showing a portion of the films that screened in New York, opting to forego the more well-known classic titles and focus instead on films we’ve never shown before, prints that are only in the country for a limited time as part of a centenary tour.
Our series kicks off with the delightful and daring silent film, Bed and Sofa (1927), a film we have shown before, but never in a beautiful 35mm film print! As a special treat, it will be accompanied by members of the Gypsy swing band Djug Django. The 1930s musical trailblazers Jolly Fellows (1934) and Tractor Drivers (1939) both capture the sounds and music of the era, providing the template for one of Russia’s most successful film styles, as well as one of its most parodied! Aleksandr Medvedkin’s rarely screened 1938 film The New Moscow is a provocative combustion of country comedy, romance and science fiction that both visualizes and criticizes an impossible Stalinist future.
1960s Moscow is portrayed in Walking the Streets of Moscow (1963) and July Rain (1966), the latter particularly recommended by Karen Shahnazarov, currently the head of Mosfilm Studios and an accomplished filmmaker himself. “I would suggest you see the film of Marlen Khutsiyev called July Rain. Khutsiyev influenced directors such as Tarkovsky, and I think he influenced very much the whole development of Soviet cinema,” stated Shahnazarov in an interview.
According to Woody Allen, Andrei Konchalovsky’s 1970 film based on the Chekhov classic is "The best Uncle Vanya I've ever seen.” Our screening of Uncle Vanya will conclude this calendar’s screenings, but the series will continue later in the month of October with two recent Russian films: Aleksandr Sokurov’s Alexandra—“a powerful examination of the Russian soul starring legendary opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya and featured in the 2007 New York Film Festival, and Sokurov’s 2006 film Elegy of Life, documenting the extraordinary partnership of Vishnevskaya and her husband, cellist-conductor Mstislav Rostropovich” (Richard Pena), both of which will be Ithaca premieres.
Film descriptions are adapted from Richard Pena’s blurbs for the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The series at Cornell is cosponsored with the Dept. of Russian. Special thanks to Slava Paperno.