“I’m a silly person, but sensitive too,” declares Valya, the 22-year-old single mother who works in a local vodka factory and lives with her mother in the backwoods Russian town of Zhigulyovsk. There’s no future here: there’s nothing to do but drink and all the men are [...]]]>

HOTDOCS

 Vodka Factory at HotDocs 2011

“I’m a silly person, but sensitive too,” declares Valya, the 22-year-old single mother who works in a local vodka factory and lives with her mother in the backwoods Russian town of Zhigulyovsk. There’s no future here: there’s nothing to do but drink and all the men are deadbeats. Ambivalent about caring for her son, the comely, heavily mascaraed Valya escapes the brutal banality of her reality by dreaming of becoming an actress in Moscow. But in realizing her dream, she would not only be abandoning her son, she’d be destroying her mother’s: Fifty-year-old Tatiana finally has a chance at love when an old flame re-enters her life. Filmed like fiction and imbued with the gorgeous melancholy of crushed dreams, award-winning Vodka Factory is a stunningly intimate reflection on the price of dreams. Gisèle Gordon

Exploring the dreams and disillusionments of people who were raised behind the Iron Curtain, My Perestroika is an intimate and compelling portrait of the challenges faced by the last generation of Soviet children.

Mon May 3 9:30 PM [...]]]> D: Robin Hessman / 87 min / Russian with English subtitles

Exploring the dreams and disillusionments of people who were raised behind the Iron
Curtain, My Perestroika is an intimate and compelling portrait of the challenges faced by the last generation of Soviet children.

Mon May 3 9:30 PM Cumberland Cinemas, 159 Cumberland Street

Sat May 8 2:00 PM Cumberland Cinemas, 159 Cumberland Street

Please, visit Hot Docs Festival for more info

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Western filmmakers have had their turns. Now new, groundbreaking, culturally-authentic versions of Anna Karenina and Taras Bulba will be on offer at the second KinoArt Festival.

The Russian Film Festival, which runs in Toronto from Thursday, November 5th, until Sunday, November 8th, 2009, will also offer Russophiles a long-awaited sequel [...]]]>
November 5 – 8, 2009

Western filmmakers have had their turns. Now new, groundbreaking, culturally-authentic versions of Anna Karenina and Taras Bulba will be on offer at the second KinoArt Festival.

The Russian Film Festival, which runs in Toronto from Thursday, November 5th, until Sunday, November 8th, 2009, will also offer Russophiles a long-awaited sequel to Assa, the film that galvanized the underground Russian rock scene back in 1987. Also featured is the North American premiere of Metro, a stunning and unique documentary on the monumental Moscow subway, the first film of its kind to cover this subject. As well, there’s the 2008 Russian box-office hit We are From the Future, Andrei Maliukov’s time-traveling adventure that takes place in St. Petersburg during the fierce defense of the city in 1942.

After a successful launch in 2007, KinoArt Festival is back and this year brings with it the massive premiere of Anna Karenina along with legendary Russian director Sergey Solovyev and actress Tatyana Drubich.  Solovyev’s version of the Leo Tolstoy’s epic love story will turn heads and provoke cinematic debate.

“We are very excited to bring Toronto our second KinoArt Festival,” says Alla-Ani Poliakova, Founder and Executive Director of the Festival. “Our goal has always been to chronicle the evolution of Russian films, past and present  through our film event, and this year we are really thrilled to be offering the most impressive feature films, documentaries, and shorts, some never before seen, and bring that to North America, specifically Toronto.”

Other highlights at KinoArt include director Kirill Serebrennikov’s Yuriev Den, about a famous opera singer, which won the Grand Prix at Warsaw International Film Festival in 2008.

Making its debut in Toronto is Taras Bulba, directed by renowned director Vladimir Bortko it is based on the book by Nikolai Gogol (called “one of the 10 greatest books of all time” by Ernest Hemingway). Famously embraced by Hollywood as a starring vehicle for the late Yul Brynner, it’s an enduringly controversial story about Ukraine’s Cossack warriors and their campaign to defend their lands from the advancing Polish armies.

From the notorious Russian director Alexei Balabanov, comes Morphine, his interpretation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s A Country Doctor’s Notebook. The film’s screenplay was written by another famous Russian director, Sergei Bodrov, Jr. This joint effort recounts the events of 1917, the turbulent year of the Russian Revolution. 

Shultes takes the audience on an existential voyage to Moscow, into the heart of Russia’s capital. The film is shown through the eyes of an ordinary Muscovite, who lives in an ordinary apartment building somewhere on the outskirts of the city, alone. His only connection to reality: his notepad.

The Festival closes with a searing documentary, Process directed by Alexander Zeldovich and devoted to the anniversary of the 1952 execution of the Jewish anti-fascist committee of the former U.S.S.R.  Process, co-presented by the Jewish Film Festival, will be followed by a Q&A. 

The same evening, visiting director Sergey Solovyev (Anna Karenina) will screen Assa – a Russian cult favourite from the late 80’s. His original film gave voice to the underground rock music scene, with the lead played by the charismatic rocker Victor Tsoy (the film’s soundtrack features a number of songs performed by a variety of Russian rock singers). Following the screening of Assa, after a wait of 22 years, will be the North American premiere of the sequel Assa 2.  Solovyev’s sequel portrays the new generation in contemporary Russia, within a complex structure that references Solovyev’s own Anna Karenina. 

Of note, Thomas Lahusen, Professor of Eurasian Cultural History at the University of Toronto and documentary filmmaker, together with Sergei Kapterev, senior researcher at the Institute of Film Art in Moscow, will participate in a panel on the present, past, and future of Russian cinema on November 6.  Some of the questions raised will be the politics of documentary film, the problem of film exhibition and preservation, and the relevance of the Soviet cinematic experience to contemporary Russian and world cinema.

Following the panel discussion, a stunning debut will occur – the world premiere of Their Kingdom, a 1928 documentary from Soviet Georgia presented by Sergei Kapterev, with a post-screening Q&A. The film, by Mikhail Kalatozishvili, had been considered lost until its first two reels were discovered at Russia’s State Film Archive. Sergei Kapterev holds a Doctorate in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the author of the book Post-Stalinist Cinema and the Russian Intelligentsia, 1953-1960.

Also, Lahusen will present his own two short films; The Province of Lost Film and The Photographer at KinoArt on November 7.