runaway souls and the poetry of place: the cinema of andrei konchalovsky october 31--november 20, 1997 photo: SHY PEOPLE

This program has been co-curated by Richard Peña and Alla Verlotsky and is presented through the generous support of Iara Lee and George Gund. Assistance was provided by SOVINTERFEST agency (Moscow). Special thanks are due Ms. Natalia Birulina. Born into a veritable nest of artists, Andrei Konchalovsky has followed familial tradition: his grandfather was a painter; his mother and father poets and authors (father Konchalovsky also penned the Soviet national anthem); and brother Nikita Mikhalkov is a filmmaker in his own right (Burnt by the Sun). Konchalovsky attended Moscow Film School in the good company of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the two later co-scripted Andrei Rublev (1966), the landmark film that did much to revive Russian cinema. His own first directorial effort was an award-winning short called The Boy and the Pigeon (1961); just four years later THE FIRST TEACHER marked his feature-film debut. Despite the two-decade suppression of his second film, ASYA'S HAPPINESS, Konchalovsky successfully survived Soviet censorship to make a series of outstanding films, concluding with the epic SIBERIADE. In 1980, this Russian auteur pulled up stakes and moved to Hollywood, where, unlike Eisenstein, he and his talent have survived another kind of repressive environment. Films such as RUNAWAY TRAIN and SHY PEOPLE are works of the first water, movies that show the unmistakable stamp of Konchalovsky's epic vision, his distinctive philosophical and aesthetic bent. This Russian Odysseus consistently evokes the "sacredness of native ground," the Spirit of Place--whether the Kirghiz, a small town in Pennsylvania, Manhattan, or the Louisiana bayous--and the potent complexity of people who pursue their often futile dreams and uncommon destinies. calendar

a scene from A NEST OF GENTLEFOLK

UNCLE VANYA USSR, 1970; 110m "The best Uncle Vanya I've ever seen." -- Woody Allen "Take note. That's a great director." -- Charles Chaplin Chekhov's clutch of existentially disappointed gentry confront their various dead-ends within the confines of a decaying house that in itself is a metaphor for their lives. Friday, October 31 and Friday, November 7: 2 and 6:30pm Thursday, November 6: 4:15 pm Saturday, November 8: 4 and 8:30 pm RUNAWAY TRAIN USA, 1985; 111m "There is such a raw, uncluttered desperation in the feats that they put slick Hollywood stunts to shame. The ending of the movie is astonishing in its emotional impact. This was one of the year's best." -- Roger Ebert An action movie for thinking adults, from a script by Akira Kurosawa. Two escaped cons ride a driverless train as it crashes through barrier after barrier, constantly under the guns of helicoptered pursuers. Superb, Oscar-nominated performances by Jon Voight, who's smart enough to recognize that freedom's an illusion, and Eric Roberts, a dangerously thoughtless wild man.With Rebecca de Mornay. Friday, October 31: 4:15 and 8:45 pm Wednesday, November 12: 4:30 and 9:20 pm Friday, November 14: 2 and 6:50 pm MARIA'S LOVERS USA, 1984; 100 minutes Slavic-American Ivan Bibic (John Savage) returns from WWII to his smalltown home in Pennsylvania and marries his betrothed (Natassja Kinski), even though she has become the object of desire for many of the steel-making burg's men--including Bibic's dad (Robert Mitchum) and another discharged GI (Vincent Spano). Trouble is, neurotic Ivan turns impotent with his virginal wife, but not with the town tart. Estrangement seems permanent until a wandering minstrel (Keith Carradine) breaks the impasse in a rather surprising way. In his first American film, Konchalovsky showed that his poetic sense of place had survived saying farewell to his homeland, and drew superb performances from a potent cast. Saturday, November 1: 2 and 9:30 pm Sunday, November 16: 4 and 8:30 pm Monday, November 17: 4:15 and 8:30 pm Tuesday, November 18: 2 pm Wednesday, November 19: 4 pm SIBERIADE USSR, 1978; 4 hours and 35 minutes, with 15-minute intermission "It was my most serious attempt to understand the metaphysics of man and nature." -- Konchalovsky "Konchalovsky has a way of linking a peculiarly Russian feeling for the sacredness of native ground with the developing force of revolution." -- Time magazine An epic saga about three generations of two families in oil-rich Siberia from 1900 to 1917, and from the Russian Revolution to the 70s. Konchalovsky portrays a century of human history, focussing on the dynamics of love and hate between the Solomins and the Ustyuzhanins. The film earned Konchalovsy international fame and the support of actor Jon Voight in bringing the director to Hollywood in 1980. (Winner, Special Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival) Saturday, November 1: 4:15 pm Sunday, November 9: 4 pm Monday, November 10: 1 and 6:15 pm Tuesday, November 11: 1 pm THE FIRST TEACHER Russia/Kirghizstan, 1965; 102 minutes For his first feature-length effort, Konchalovsky went "abroad": "I boarded a plane bound for Kirghizia. It was packed with people speaking a strange guttural language, you could almost smell their flocks of sheep.... I was thinking: 'Will the day really come when I can return to Moscow with 25 kilometres of film in the can?'" Return he did, with a film that won high praise for its refusal to kowtow to social realism in its authentically human story, in-depth characters, and that Konchalovsky trademark, a strong evocation of personality-shaping environment. Sunday, November 2: 4 and 8:15 pm Monday, November 3: 2 and 6:15 pm Wednesday, November 5: 4 and 8:15 pm ASYA'S HAPPINESS USSR, 1967; 99 minutes A healthy young Russian beauty who lives and works on a Soviet collective farm becomes pregnant. To the disapproval of the folks in charge, Asya is so delighted with her fertile state that she's not in the least upset that her lover won't marry her. Konchalovsky chose mostly non-professionals from the location where ASYA was filmed, and encouraged them to speak in their own words about real experiences. Under a political regime opposed to religion, ASYA's ordinary people are revealed as extraordinarily moral, practitioners of bedrock Christian values. So dangerous was Konchalovsky's unfettered imagination, his film was banned for 21 years! Sunday, November 2: 6:15 pm Monday, November 3: 4 and 8:20 pm Tuesday, November 4: 2 pm Wednesday, November 5: 2 and 6:15 pm A NEST OF GENTLEFOLK USSR, 1969; 111 minutes An exquisitely elegant adaptation of a Turgenev classic, NEST is a sympathetic treatment of a sad love triangle involving a good-hearted man of property, his unfaithful wife, and the woman loved by the landowner. Though Konchalovsky was accused of taking refuge in the politically "safe" classics, he clearly brought the full weight of his talent to bear on NEST. One critic claimed that the director's "use of light surpasses the best of von Sternberg and he uses color like a great painter." Thursday, November 6: 2 pm Friday, November 7: 4:15 and 8:40 pm Saturday, November 8: 6:15 pm ROMANCE OF THE LOVERS USSR, 1974; 135 minutes "When working on ROMANCE, I was drawn by the thought: 'What if I assumed the most tragic tone imaginable and try not to ruin it by so doing?' " -- Konchalovsky "In this film there are and can be no villains. Everyone is a paragon of virtue. They live their lives according to a lofty civic code and derive happiness from their subjection. The unpleasant side of everyday life so well known to us all is annihilated by socialism....Within this idealized world Konchalovsky shows his audience the timeless tragedy of human life. Even in the earthly paradise of the future...conflict between duty and emotions is inevitable." -- Alexander Lipkov Wednesday, November 12: 2 and 6:45 pm Friday, November 14: 4:15 and 9 pm SHY PEOPLE USA, 1987; 118 minutes "An American version on the theme of roots, ecology, morality and the legacy of Stalinism!" -- Andrei Plakhov Two very different women, each the product of her respective environment: Jill Clayburgh, a Manhattan magazine writer, goes off with coke-addicted daughter Martha Plimpton to meet and mine a story out of a distant cousin (Barbara Hershey), matriarch of a strange family living in the heart of the Louisiana bayous. Roger Ebert rightly called SHY PEOPLE "one of the great visionary films...a film that shakes off the petty distractions of safe Hollywood entertainments and develops a large vision. It suggests that family ties are the most important bonds in the world, and by the end of the film, Clayburgh will discover that Hershey is closer to her 'dead' husband than most city-dwellers are to anybody." Look for sly humor, eerie swamp scenes, and a superb performance from Hershey (Best Actress award, Cannes Film Festival). Sunday, November 16: 6:10 pm Monday, November 17: 2 pm and 6:15 pm Tuesday, November 18: 4 pm and 8:20 pm Thursday, November 20: 2 pm DUET FOR ONE USA/Great Britain, 1986; 110 minutes "[DUET] happily avoids obtrusive symbolism, is redolent of Chekhovian atmosphere." -- Andrei Plakhov Konchalovsky draws a remarkable performance from Julie Andrews as an internationally acclaimed violinist who discovers she has an incurable disease. Taking an accounting of her life and loves, Andrews finds her conductor husband (Alan Bates) wanting, loses her best student (Rupert Everett) to show biz, confides in an empathetic psychiatrist (Max von Sydow), and starts an affair with a working man (Liam Neeson). There's despair here, but Andrews elevates the material through the power of her rage and resignation. Tuesday, November 18: 6:15 pm Thursday, November 20: 4:15 and 9 pm