Saturday, May 31, 2014

Yakov Segel - Inoplanetyanka AKA Extraterrestrial Girl (1984)



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Extraterrestrial Girl visited Earth.
Inventor Blinkov in love with her. His love is awakened in her new emotions and feelings.
She realized that Blinkov can not live in a different world.
And she leaves the Earth with sadness and loneliness.

Mikhail Karzhukov & Aleksandr Kosyr - Nebo zovyot AKA The Sky Calls (1959)





Quote:
A Soviet scientific expedition is being prepared as the world's first mission to planet Mars. Their space ship Homeland has been built at a space station, where the expedition awaits the command to start. An American ship Typhoon experiencing mechanical problems arrives at the same space station, secretly having the same plans for the conquest of the Red Planet. Trying to stay ahead of Soviets, they start without proper preparation, and soon are again in distress. The Homeland changes course to save the crew of Typhoon. They succeed, but find that their fuel reserves are now insufficient to get to Mars. So Homeland makes an emergency landing on an asteroid "Icarus" passing near Mars, on which they are stranded. After an attempt to send a fuel supply by unmanned rocket fails, another ship Meteor is sent with a cosmonaut on a possibly suicidal mission, to save the stranded cosmonauts.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Nikoloz Sanishvili – Chermeni AKA Chermen (1970)





The film’s main hero is Chermen. An illegitimate son, Chermen is striving to assert his dignity. He is opposed by Dacco, the elder of the Aldar clan, in whose village Chermen lives. Guided by mercenary motives, Dacco strikes a deal with Prince Tsarai. Together, they rob people and then divide the loot between themselves.
By some chance, Chermen learns of the deal and informs his friends about it. At first, he thinks that no one in the Aldar village would believe him, the bastard, and that the plot would remain unexposed. But the friends accept the challenge.

Aleksandr Rogozhkin - Karaul (1990)



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Synopsis (courtesy of the two IMDB comments):

Very cinematic Russian tale of alienation and lost identity
I saw this film on a local government television station in Australia called SBS which played it at midnight. There's something very beautiful about this film which despite being set amidst the cold, harsh landscape of a desolate Russian territory it features the vitally honest, wan, lost eyes of the lead actor (whose name I can't recall regrettably) whose vivid sense of alienation was extremely memorable. Its a B&W film about a military guard who finds himself lost amidst his fellow guards' corruption and his own painful sense of duty versus his sense of goodness. Its a classic, familiar storyline but the use of black and white film is extremely powerful. It also contains a homo-erotic theme - obvious in parts like the shower-room scene in which the lead characters nakedness offers both symbolic proof of his feeling of emptiness but also the sad truth that even reduced to nakedness his alienation from fellow guards is unbreakable. Throughout this film the sad beauty is haunting but there are some strong moments of violence. This is a film filled with silences in which the eyes are very much windows to the soul. I found myself quietly reflective after viewing this film.

Ivan Pyryev – Svinarka i pastukh AKA They Met in Moscow (1941)



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Musical comedy. Herding pigs girl Glasha of the Russian countryside and the shepherd Musaib of Dagestani aul came to Moscow at the agricultural exhibition, meet there and fall in love at first sight. They will leave for a long time, and partial to Glasha fellow villager does not want to so just give the girl a distant opponent.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Sergei Loznitsa - V tumane AKA In the Fog (2012)





Quote:
Western frontiers of the USSR, 1942. The region is under German occupation, and local partisans are fighting a brutal resistance campaign. A train is derailed not far from the village, where Sushenya, a rail worker, lives with his family. Innocent Sushenya is arrested with a group of saboteurs, but the German officer makes a decision not to hang him with the others and sets him free. Rumours of Sushenya’s treason spread quickly, and partisans Burov and Voitik arrive from the forest to get revenge. As the partisans lead their victim through the forest, they are ambushed, and Sushenya finds himself one-to-one with his wounded enemy. Deep in an ancient forest, where there are neither friends nor enemies, and where the line between treason and heroism disappears, Sushenya is forced to make a moral choice under immoral circumstances. —In The Fog official website

Sergei Loznitsa - Artel (2006)



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A classic of Russian documentary film he also stamps his typical hallmark on his latest film. Long shots fragmented with fade-outs, a sophisticated composition and the effective use of 35 mm black-and-white film. Loznitsa is able to raise seeming banality to the status of an artistic testimony indirectly reminiscent of the classics of Russian cinematography. On this occasion, he takes his camera along to record an attempt to catch fish in a frozen lake in the middle of the snowy Russian plains. In this harsh natural environment, four young men try to rip from the frozen depths of nature something which will provide them with a livelihood.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Sergei Eisenstein & Grigory Alexandrov - Frauennot - Frauenglück AKA Misery and Fortune of Woman (1929)

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Description:
This short film shows the contrast between the good conditions in which a rich woman makes a abortion and the miserable and dangerous condition in which a poor woman has to do an abortion.