THE WALTER READE THEATER

Soviet Sounds: Russian and Soviet Composers in the Cinema

January 24 - 30, 2003
Presented in cooperation with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's program Masterpieces of the Russian Underground, Russian Expressionism: From Shostakovich to Schnittke. For more information please visit their website at www.chambermusicsociety.org [www.chambermusicsociety.org/events/underground]

Among the many extraordinary features of Soviet-era filmmaking was the quality of the scores - the splendor and power of the visuals were matched, and then some, by their aural counterpart. Small wonder, given the level of talent at work. This series is a celebration of those brilliant composers who lent their mastery and their passion to the cinema - from Prokofiev (ALEXANDER NEVSKY, IVAN THE TERRIBLE) to Tigran Mansuryan (SAYAT NOVA), from Schnittke (UNCLE VANYA, COMMISSAR) to Shostakovich (HAMLET). Join us for this celebration of Russian and Soviet Composers in the Cinema.

ALEXANDER NEVSKY / ALEKSANDR NEVSKY
Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1938; 107m
Music by Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 masterpiece, with music by Sergei Prokofiev, is a unique phenomenon in film and music history. Prokofiev's brilliant orchestral and vocal score is considered one of the greatest ever composed for a movie. Combined with Eisenstein's extraordinary directing this work is one of the greatest achievements of Soviet and world cinema. Eisenstein had the entire Russian army at his disposal, and the battle scenes, complete with thousands of men, are spectacular. His meticulous attention to detail is unbelievably exact. The result is a patriotic pageantry of stirring images and dramatic music, particularly in the Battle of the Ice sequence, which even today remains unsurpassed in the history of cinema. - London International Film Festival
Fri Jan 24: 2 & 6:30; Sat Jan 25: 8:50

COMMISSAR / KOMISSAR
Aleksandr Askoldov, Russia, 1967; 115m
Music by Alfred Schnittke
In the 1920s during the Russian Civil War, a stern, hard-boiled and pregnant Red Army Commissar is ordered to live with a poor but generous Jewish family. Amidst their warmth and compassion she is transformed into a tender and feminine mother. But when the White Army approaches, she must choose between her commitment to the Revolution and her attachment to her child. Includes brilliant montage sequences, an evocative avant-garde score by Alfred Schnittke, and great performances. Director Askoldov - who is not Jewish - paints a sympathetic portrait of Jews, honestly examines anti-Semitism, and makes a plea for a moral world in this masterpiece, which was banned for twenty-one years. - 1988 San Francisco International Film Festival.
Fri Jan 24: 4:15 & 8:45

IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART I / IVAN GROZNJI I
Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1945; 96m
IVAN THE TERRIBLE PART II / IVAN GROZNJI II
Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1958; 90m
Music by Sergei Prokofiev
Following the success of ALEXANDER NEVSKY, Eisenstein was keen to employ Prokofiev on his 1942 epic, IVAN THE TERRIBLE. The film is based on the struggles of the 16th-century Tsar Ivan IV to establish himself, his love for for the Tsarina, his political aims, and his conflict with the Boyars and the Church. Eisenstein began shooting his three-part epic (only two were completed) after more than two years of research, making sketches of every scene of the film. Stalin approved Part I, but as Ivan's character became more complex he turned against it, and Part II (subtitled The Boyars' Plot) was not released until 1958, five years after Stalin's and Prokofiev's deaths, and ten after Eisenstein's. Taking its imagery from Grand Opera, the Japanese Kabuki Theater and Russian iconography, it is a slow-paced, opulent and absorbing work. It was the great director's final work. - The Faber Companion to Foreign Films
Part I: Sat Jan 25: 1; Sun Jan 26: 7:30 Wed Jan 29: 2 Part II: Sat Jan 25: 3; Sun Jan 26: 9:30 Wed Jan 29: 4

THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES / SAYAT NOVA
Sergei Paradjanov, USSR, 1969; 75m
Music by Tigran Mansuryan
Paradjanov's film is a collage of glorious sounds and sights, a succession of brilliantly colored and hypnotic tableaux, telling the story of Sayat Nova's life from his birth in 1712, to his time as court poet to the King of Georgia, to his death in 1795. The bewitching score is by the great Armenian composer Tigran Mansuryan. "Sayat Nova, " wrote Serge Daney in Libération, "is one of those films (of which there are fewer and fewer every day) that resembles nothing else before it."
Sat Jan 25: 5; Mon Jan 27: 4 pn & 9

UNCLE VANYA / DYADYA VANYA
Andrei Konchalovsky, USSR, 1970; 104m
Andrei Konchalovsky's mesmerizing version of Chekhov's classic "comedy" has a ravishingly poetic sense of place, a dacha in which the better part of the action claustrophically unfolds, as striking a presence as Chekhov's bewildered characters. With Irina Anisimova, Wulf as the mother, War and Peace director Sergei Bondarchuk as Astrov and Yekaterina Mazurova as Marina. The score is by Alfred Schnittke. Woody Allen reckons that this is the best version of Uncle Vanya he's ever seen (you can see traces of it in his own film September). With this film, film scholars Mira and Antonin Liehm found that "the sorrow, the nostalgia and the hopelessness of the Russian intelligentsia had found a true poet." Sat Jan 25: 6:45; Tue Jan 28: 4 & 9

GALINA USTVOLSKAYA
Cherry Duyns and Reinbert de Leeuw, The Netherlands, 1994; 58m
Ustvolskaya was one in a string of composers from the Soviet Union to be "discovered" by the West during the period of glasnost and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union. The unwavering resolve in her religious belief and the self-imposed solitary life Ustvolskaya leads reminds one of a monk who has taken vows of seclusion and abstinence from the material world. Her pieces 'Dies Irae' and 'Sonata No. 5' are performed in this documentary. - Marian Lee
Preceded by
SOFIA GUBAIDULINA
Cherry Duyns and Reinbert de Leeuw, The Netherlands, 1994; 58m
Sofia Gubaidulina was born in Chistopol in the Tatar Republic of the Soviet Union in 1931. Gubaidulina is the author of symphonic and choral works, two cello concerti, a viola concerto, four string quartets, a string trio, works for percussion ensemble, and many works for nonstandard instruments and distinctive combinations of instruments. Her scores frequently explore unconventional techniques of sound production. Her piece 'Now Always Snow' is performed in this documentary. - Marian Lee
Sun Jan 26: 5; Mon Jan 27: 1:30

SOLOVKY POWER
Marina Goldovskaya, USSR, 1988; 93m
Music by Nikolai Karetnikov and Marianna Krutoyarskaya
A strong documentary about the first Soviet labor camp established by Lenin in 1923, Power commemorates the grim experiences of "class enemies" - farmer and workers, Socialists, Anarchists, scientists and writers-imprisoned in an ancient Orthodox monastery called Solovki located on a remote island in the White Sea. The film combines old newsreels, letters from the prisoners in voice-over and songs with the beautiful landscape of the site today. Live interviews with survivors contrast sharply with a 1928 public relations documentary. A haunting film, SOLOVKY POWER is considered one of the most highly regarded documentaries of the glasnost era.
Wed Jan 29: 6; Thurs Jan 30: 9

HAMLET / GAMLET
Grigory Kozintsev, Lenfilm, 1964; 140m
Music by Dmitri Shostakovitch
Arguably the finest screen Hamlet of all time, Kozintsev's film won a special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and, in 1967, was nominated for a Best Foreign Picture Golden Globe. By no means a "filmed play," Kozintsev's Hamlet is profoundly cinematic; it is also swept clean of Freudian accoutrements and treated with somber fervor closer to Orson Welles's Macbeth. The images, enriched by the dramatic Shostakovitch music, are bold, sweeping and powerful. Boris Pasternak's modern-language translation is used for the dialogue. Wed Jan 29: 8:15; Thurs Jan 30: 4

BEAR'S KISS
Sergei Bodrov, Russia, 2002; 92m
Music by Giya Kancheli
Bodrov's new film, BEAR'S KISS, follows a young traveling circus performer, Lola, as she travels across Europe with the bohemian misfits of her troupe who, like figures from one of Fellini's set pieces, loom large and loud even as they are fraught with insecurities and personal tragedies. Lola grows lonely in such company, especially after her mother - with whom she shares a trapeze act - absconds. But her alienation from her fellow performers becomes the source of a profound and magical love as she grows closer to the circus bear Misha, who, like her, is both imprisoned in, and shunned by, this subculture of outcasts. Aided by Kancheli's evocative score, Bodrov has fashioned a film of magic, a modern fairy tale rooted in his Russian heritage. The relationship he builds between Lola and Misha is the heart of the film; the looks that pass between these two are not only signs of desire for each other, but for a homeland that neither has ever known. - 2002 Toronto Film Festival
Thurs Jan 30: 2 & 7