Kira Muratova - Lyst do Ameryky AKA Letter To America (1999)

Description: The short is made in a typical Muratova style that merges surrealism and reality into a mesmerizing act full of understatement and metaphor.

Some trivia: this is nominally Muratova's first short. However, she herself considers it her fourth - she prefers to think of her Three Stories as three short films instead of a single feature.

The film was made with no budget whatsoever - all Muratova was given were the camera and the film stock. None of the actors were paid. The rumor has it that the film was shot in Muratova's own apartment.

Kira Muratova - The Tuner (Nastroyshchik) (2004)

from review @ Kinokultura:

At the heart of Kira Muratova’s newest film, The Tuner (Nastroishchik, 2004), is her characteristic and enduring love of predation—predation for its own sake. Of course, any talk of “the heart of Muratova’s work” is a judgment of anatomy rather than sentiment, as any admirer would attest. With The Tuner, she has produced an extraordinary new film that offers a complex assessment of the human subject, civilization, and the creative act.

Kira Muratova - Uvlecheniya AKA Passions (1994)

Michael Atkinson:

Passions (1994) has a slightly different program: Accompany a pack of extroverted, sub-Fellini nutlogs to a horse farm, where they prance, vamp, and blabber about horses, love, and life. "It's like somebody nudges me and whispers: Ask them—will they bear it?" one character says, summarizing Muratova's strategy. Photographed in uncharacteristically lush colors, Passions won an indulgent Russian Oscar.

Kira Muratova - Dolgie provody AKA A Long Goodbye (1971)

It is a great film by a great director.Kira Muratova has never been given her due in the Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.In the "Long Good Bye" she depicts a seemingly banal story of a jealous and possessive mother (brilliantly acted by Zinaida Sharko) and her poor aloof and lonely son (the only cinematic role by the talented O. Vladimirsky). The story - which is nothing extraordinary in itself - grows into the wonderful and frightening analysis of alienation between genders and generations on the background of the even more frighteningly bleak and dehumanized Soviet reality.Kira Muratova shows the tiny details of everyday Soviet life,and, again , banal as they are ,they are a hair-raising horror.The dialogue is deliberately laconic and void of any sense, showing the ever-growing people's inability to communicate and understand each other.The sound track ( by another under-estimated talent, Oleg Karavaichuk)adds to the atmosphere of hopeless and meaningless existence.Of course,Sasha (the name of the protagonist),will leave his despotic ( but loving!) mother sooner or later, but where for? (c) Author: drbagrov from Taiwan

Kira Muratova - Astenicheskiy sindrom AKA Asthenic Syndrome (1989)

Quote:
In the old days it was called hypochrondria, or black melancholia. Now, apparently, it's termed the Asthenic Syndrome. Whatever it is, Nikolai, a teacher of epicly indifferent pupils, has got it, and it's not much fun. Worse yet, quite a few other people, even an entire society, seem to be afflicted with the same problem writ extremely large... Written by L.H. Wong

Kira Muratova - Korotkie vstrechi AKA Brief Encounters (1967)

kinoglaz.fr:
Nadya (Nina Ruslanova) is a young woman who loves the geologist Maxim (Vladimir Vysotsky). She takes a job as a housemaid before discovering Maxim is romantically involved with town official Valentina Ivanovna (Kira Muratova). The heartbroken Nadya goes away before Maxim can return, leaving him and Valentina to pursue their romance.

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imdb:
Nadja, a country girl moves to the city and becomes Valya's maid. Valya, a member of the District Soviet, does not know that Nadja fell in love with Valya's currently absent husband, a geologist, when he was at her village on a recent expedition. Written by Erik Gregersen {erik@astro.as.utexas.edu}