Fall 2009 Slavic Film Series
Weekly Showings of Slavic Cinema Every Other Wednesday at 7 PM
In Clemons Library Room 322a
Wednesday, September 16 Russia, 1929; 68 min. Directed by Dziga Vertov [Man With a Movie Camera] A classic avant-garde Soviet Masterpiece. A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness. |
Wednesday, September 30 Poland, 1956; 91 min. Directed by Andrezj Wajda [Canal]
September, 1944. It's the 56th day of Warsaw's uprising against the Nazis. The third Platoon of the Resistance is down to 43 heroic men and women, and they're penned in. After a last day of fighting and goodbyes, a handful of doomed survivors wade into the city's underground sewers in hopes of escape. |
Wednesday, October 7 Russia, 1957 (Released 1960); 97 min. Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov [Cranes Are Flying] Veronica plans a rendezvous with her lover, Boris, at the bank of river, only for him to be drafted into World War II shortly thereafter.
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Wednesday, October 21 Russia, 1972; 88 min. Directed by Aleksandr Seryj; [Gentlemen of Luck] A kindergarten teacher is a mistaken for a criminal nicknamed "Docent" who stole the priceless headpiece of Alexander the Great during an archaeological expedition. |
Wednesday, November 4 Russia, 1994; 135 min. Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov [Burnt by the Sun] Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call...
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Wednesday, November 18 Czech, 1996; 105 min. Directed by Jen Sverak [Kolya] Franta Louka is a concert cellist in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, a confirmed bachelor and a lady's man. Having lost his place in the state orchestra, he must make ends meet by playing at funerals and painting tombstones. But he has run up a large debt, and when his friend, the grave-digger Mr. Broz, suggests a scheme for making a lot of money by marrying a Russian woman so that she can get her Czech papers, he reluctantly agrees, unaware that he would have to look after her five-year-old son. |
Wednesday, December 2 Russia 1996; 99 min. Directed by Sergei Bodrov [Prisoner of the Caucasus]
Based upon a short story by Leo Tolstoy, two Russian soldiers, Sasha and Vanya, are ambushed by Muslim rebels in the forbidding Caucasian Mountains and taken prisoner. |
