Alexei Uchitel is the leading Russian director whose features regularly receive awards at international and domestic festivals. He was born to the family of the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Efim Uchitel, who is known for his chronicles about Leningrad’s blockade during World War II. By following the footsteps of his father, he started his career as a documentary filmmaker and, among others, produced his documentary Rock (1987), which is still considered the most representative portrayal of the underground rock-n-roll culture in the late Soviet Union. Being versatile in genre and style, he equally excels in drama, teen comedy, biopic, action thriller, and period features. In all his films he poignantly explores mysterious aspects of human psychology with utmost realistic precision and dramatism. Continue reading “Heroes on the Edge: An Interview with Alexei Uchitel”

It was hard being a hero of the Soviet Motherland. Alexander Pechersky’s service during WWII was indeed truly heroic. The Jewish Red Army officer-conscript was instrumental leading the mass escape from the Sobibor concentration camp. In later years, Pechersky wanted to continue to fight against his National Socialist captors, but the Soviet Union denied him exit permission to testify against any accused war criminals, including the celebrated Eichmann trial. He was also dismissed from his position during the anti-Semitic “Rootless Cosmopolitan” campaign. It is worth keeping the frustrations of his later life in mind when viewers revisit the triumph of the uprising he sparked in Konstantin Khabenskiy’s Sobibor, Russia’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as part of Russian Film Week in New York. Continue reading “Russian Film Week ‘18: Sobibor”

Авдотья Смирнова: как написать речь для Льва Толстого

Режиссер о своем новом фильме «История одного назначения»

В Нью-Йорке началась Неделя российского кино (Russian Film Week, или RFW). В залах Школы визуальных искусств (SVA Theater) в манхэттенском районе Челси демонстрируются 14 новых российских фильмов разных жанров, а также лирическая комедия «Прогулка», которой исполнилось 15 лет. Continue reading “Director About New Film (in Russian)”

It surely would have been a classic, but instead it is one of the best-known unmade films not associated with Orson Welles. In Andrei Tarkovsky’s script for Hoffmaniana, German Romantic fantasist E.T.A. Hoffman would have interacted with characters from several of his classic stories. This is a very different film, even though it has a similar title and premise. Stylistically, this is not very Tarkovskian, obviously starting with the painstakingly rendered stop-motion animation. E.T.A. Hoffman and his alter-ego vividly come to life in Stanislav Sokolov’s Hoffmaniada, which screens as part of Russian Film Week in New York. Continue reading “Russian Film Week 18: Hoffmaniada”