Amherst College Russian Film Series • Fall 2016
DISSENT
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Thursdays at 4:30 and 7:30 PM • Keefe Campus Center Theater
Our fall series commemorates the 25th anniversary of the political events that took place in the USSR in August of 1991 and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. These films offer us an opportunity to examine dissent as a social, political and artistic phenomenon in its private and public dimensions, during the Soviet era and in post-Soviet spaces.
September 22: Maidan («Майдан»)
dir. Sergey Loznitsa • 2014 • 130 min.
Filmed in Kiev between December 2013 and February 2014, Loznitsa’s documentary follows in fascinating detail the civil unrest in the Ukranian capital city’s central square (maidan) that toppled the government of Viktor Yankovich. This record of a momentous historical event is an extraordinary study of the popular uprising as a cultural and philosophical phenomenon, shot in stunning long takes.
October 13: Strike («Стачка»)
dir. Sergey Eisenstein • 1925 • 79 min.
The first full-length feature project of the pre-eminent Soviet filmmaker Sergey Eisenstein represents his earliest attempt at putting into practice his innovative theory of the “montage of attractions.” The account of a brutally-suppressed factory strike ahead of the first Russian revolution was itself revolutionary: it broke cinematographic conventions and signaled the arrival of a new visual language.
October 27: Revolution’s Angels («Ангелы Революции»)
dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko • 2014 •113 min.
Based on a true story, the film revisits a dark chapter in Soviet history: the forced collectivization of peasants in the 1930s. It follows the mission of four avant-garde artists, for whom esthetic experimentation is necessarily of a piece with political revolution, to a remote village in the taiga, where they find themselves embroiled in a very different kind of uprising.
November 17: Falling Leaves («Листопад»)
dir. Otar Iosseliani • 1966 • 96 min.
An important early film from the Georgian master filmmaker is a story of innocence lost: what begins as a light-hearted account of an awkward adolescent turns into a poignant examination of everyday cynicism and corruption.
December 8: I Аm Twenty («Мне двадцать лет»)
dir. Marlen Khutsiev • 1965 • 189 min.
Legendary for the controversy it stirred at the time, the film follows three lifelong friends, just back from the army, who wander the streets of Moscow during the years of the post-Stalin “thaw.” Their search for an authentic life — one not limited by either ideological or materialistic concerns — unfolds against the background of their struggles with the personal and collective legacy of Soviet participation in World War II.
