Astra Film

In Love Zone

Director: Arcady Morozov
Country: Russia
Year: 2002
Length: 28

The film follows a Mansi family, living on the shore of the Pelym river in Western Siberia. Pelym is on the northern edge of the Urals, on the divide between Europe and Asia, and it used to be a location for some of the many remote penal colonies during Stalinist times. In the middle of the taiga, and among the remains of a deserted forestry area, people attempt to reinvent themselves in the midst of abandoned socialist infrastructure. We meet a teenager who has never seen a village or a town in his life, a blind man who sets traps to catch wild animals, and a mechanic who assembles spare parts into weird machineries. The documentary proposes an encounter with one of the many faces of Russia.

My Lost Russia

Director: Iossif Pasternak
Country: France
Year: 2004
Length: 52

The film was shot in the small town Efremov, where Pasternak’s camera identified a variety of characters whose stories are brought together to reconstruct today’s Russia: the ruined farmer writing letters to President Putin in his quest for justice, the priest who can finally inaugurate the new church after years of struggle, the striptease dancers who dream to become school teachers, the old pessimist who declares that Efremov is the worst place on earth, the young soldiers on their way to Chechnya. The filmmaker explores the life of the town in a non-intrusive way, to give a sometimes nostalgic and sometimes humorous insight into the stories of common people. Putting all their stories together, the viewer eventually understands what has changed, what is in the process of changing and what will never change in Efemov and in Russia.

Intercession of the Virgin Day of the Kiliny Family

Director: Leonid Filimonov
Country: Russia
Year: 2002
Length: 33

The film introduces the Kiliny family, focusing on the patriarchal figure of Anany Kleonovich Kilin, a philosopher, a writer, and the spiritual leader of one of the most viable communities of Old Believers in Russia.
The Old Believers, also known as Old Ritualists, came into existence in the 17th century, when a part of the Russian population refused to adopt the imposed changes in the traditional Russian Orthodox practices. They were harshly persecuted under the tsars and later, and many of their communities lived in almost complete isolation for centuries. After several unsuccessful attempts, Anany Kleonovich finally found a place to settle with his family, in the suburbs of a southern city. In time, more and more relatives, and members of the old believers community joined them. The film shows them as they prepare and celebrate the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin, which coincides with Anany Kleonovich’s birthday. It is the portrait of a lively community gathered around a powerful and charismatic man, whose spirit has not been defeated by the crucibles in his life.

The Rule of Vera

Director: Peter Stepin
Country: Russia
Year: 2004
Length: 42

In the 50s, the Communist Party honored Vera Rybatchek with the Labor Hero Golden Star. She received this award for achieving record production in the dairy where she worked. She later received praise as the exemplary mother of many children. Vera was one of the faces of communist propaganda, used to promote the model of the new Soviet woman. Today, few remember, and even less care about, her honors. There are also some, in the village, who contest the veracity of her record productions. Vera and her large family must now struggle to survive. The film combines newsreels of Soviet history with glimpses into Vera’s present life. There are interviews with her, her family, and, people in the village. These glimpses portray a hard-working, good-hearted woman. She is someone who, once used by the Soviet propaganda machine, and now lives forgotten in a remote Russian village. In the meantime, the Golden Star medal had to be exchanged for a sack of sugar.

Landscape

Director: Sergei Loznitsa
Country: Russia
Year: 2003
Length: 60

A provincial Russian town. A cold winter day. People waiting for the bus. The camera slowly pans over faces, while we hear scraps of conversations. Under the appearance of a candid-camera documentation, we discover a keen eye for relevant details which make up the picture of the miseries and worries of Russian every-day life. Landscape experiments with cinema language, using almost exclusively left-to-right long tracking shots cut to give the impression of a continuous camera movement.

The Belovs

Director: Victor Kossakovski
Country: Russia
Year: 1992
Length: 60

A dusty country road, much vodka, or tea, Russian steam baths, cattle, dogs running about. The filmmaker takes us into the life of the Belov family. Anna Feodorovna is twice a widow, still regrets not having married her first love. Her brother, Mikhail, spends his days drinking, cursing his sister, and presenting his philosophical and political solutions to the
world’s misery. There are also two more brothers, who, from time to time, come to visit Anna and Mikhail. “You shouldn’t film us.” says one of the Belovs. “We’re common people, living where the river begins.” Yet, Kossakovski did film them. He tells, in his unique style, a touching and sincere story about the life, joys and sorrows of a peasant family living in a Russian province. The Belovs is considered to be one of the masterpieces of post soviet Russian documentary cinema. It was produced by the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio, and Kossakowski regards himself as a disciple of the famous generation of St. Petersburg documentarists of the 1960s. This film has been shown in the most prestigeous film festivals all over the world, and it is a must see film in the curricula of most film academies in Europe.

Magnitogork-Forging the New Man

Director: Piter Jan Smit
Country: The Netherlands
Year: 1997
Length: 57

In the early thirties, the bare steppes of the Urals were transformed at breakneck speed into a blast-furnace complex, and a city was raised out of the ground - Magnitogorsk. Volunteers from Eastern and Western Europe were involved, but most of the work was done by forced labor. Magnitogorsk was the model project to demonstrate the energy of the first five-year plan of the Soviet economy. In 1932, Joris Ivens made a film about the building up of the Soviet Union. He chose Magnitogorsk as an example of how the new world and the new man were being forged. His film Song of the Heroes encapsulates the spirit of the prevailing ideology of the time. Five years after Ivens had completed his film, Viktor Kalnykov, the main character, a Labour Hero, was accused of contrarevolutionary activities and executed. Taking Ivens’ film as an inspiration, this documentary goes in search of the past and current life and ideals of the builders and residents of Magnitogorsk after more than seventy years.

Piter

Director: Jessica Gorter, Frank Gorter
Country: The Netherlands
Year: 2004
Length: 80

“Piter” is a nickname for Sankt Petersburg, a city as spectacular as the chronicle of its creation. The filmmakers explore the city following the every-day lives of seven St. Petersburg residents. Alexander Ivanov, once a senior party official, now runs a floristry empire. Anatoli, formerly an editor with a local newspaper, is unemployed and survives on charity and from collecting recyclable bottles. Elena Yakovlevna is a great Stalin fan. She is 87, and believes that life was much better under his regime. The people portrayed in the film are not connected directly, but they live in the same transitional milieu. They must now adapt and create new expectations of the future, fifteen years after Gorbachev’s perestroika.