Special Guest: Karen Shakhnazarov Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Alistair Pitts
We’re discussing the 1988 film from Karen Shakhnazarov, Zero City. The film stars Leonid Filatov as Aleksei Varakin, he’s from a Moscow Mechanical Plant and comes to a small town to meet with a man about air conditioners. He soon finds himself in an absurdist nightmare where he’s served a cake that looks like his own head by a chef who is not his father and commits suicide.
Samm Deighan and Alistair Pitts join Mike to talk about the film while director Karen Shakhnazarov provides more context to the making of the movie.
Special Guest: Jane Taubman Guest Co-Hosts: Gianna D'Emilio, Alistair Pitts
We conclude our month of discussions about Soviet Cinema with a double feature from Kira Muratova, Brief Encounters (1967) and The Long Farewell (1971). Brief Encounters got a very limited release while The Long Farewell was shelved before release. Both films finally got their day in the sun as the Cold War began to thaw.
In Brief Encounters, two women are in love with the same man. The film has a real New Wave feel to it with a fractured timeline and rough production. In The Long Farewell we see a mother, Yevgeniya, become more and more estranged from her son after he spends a summer with his father.
Jane Taubman joins us to discuss Muratova's work while Gianna D'Emilio and Alistair Pitts provide insight on these challenging films.
We continue our month of discussing Soviet Cinema with a look at Tatyana Lioznova's Three Poplars on Plyuschikha Street (1968). Written by Aleksandr Borshchagovskiy, it’s the story of Nyura (Tatyana Doronina), a country woman who comes to the big city of Moscow to see her sister in law. There she meets Sasha (Oleg Efremov), a taxi driver. They share stories and a song on the way to Plyuschikha Street. He offers to take her to the movies and she agrees but things go wrong.
We continue our month of discussing Soviet Cinema with a look at Elem Klimov's Welcome, or No Trespassing (1964). It’s the story of a group of kids at a summer camp where one boy, Kostja Inockin (Viktor Kosykh), breaks from the pack and swims a little too far. He’s immediately expelled by Director Dynin (Evgeniy Evstigneev) but later Inockin returns.
We are kicking off a month of discussions around Soviet cinema with a look at the 1962 film, The Amphibian Man. It’s the story of a love triangle between the daughter of a poor man, Guitierre (Anastasiya Vertinskaya) who has been promised to the rich Don Pedro (Mikhail Kozakov). She’s saved from a shark attack by the titular Amphibian Man, whose real name is Ichthyander (Vladimir Korenev). Of course, Guitierre and Ichthyander fall in love and should really be together. Can they escape from Argentina to Australia and live their lives there or will Don Pedro not allow their love to flourish?
Special Guest: Karen Shakhnazarov
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