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Russian films at the East End Film Festival
We are as disappointed as you are that the ash cloud stopped our Russian authors from making it to the UK for our SLOVO festival. However, the festival has not been cancelled, merely postponed. We are working hard to bring the events to London at a later date, so keep a close eye on our website!
In the meantime, Academia Rossica is delighted to support The East End Film Festival (22 April – Friday 30) in their focus on new Russian cinema.
In recent years the East End Film Festival has looked to Eastern Europe for inspirational and experimental new films. After young Russian filmmaker Valeriya Gai Germanika won East End Film Festival’s “Best International First Feature” award in 2009 for coming-of-age drama EVERYBODY DIES BUT ME, the East End Film Festival decided to focus much of its 2010 programme on the emerging trends in Russian cutting-edge cinema.
Director Igor Voloshin comes to East London to present the UK Premiere of his gritty new film I AM (YA). Described as a ‘psychedelic drama’, it’s a hallucinogenic story of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll set in a Russian psychiatric unit that centres on the generation destroyed by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The festival also welcomes uncompromising Russian director Aleksey Balabanov. Best known internationally for his hit Brothers films in the nineties, he comes to East End Film Festival to present his two most recent films. Using the code-word for the boxes which bring dead soldiers back from Afghanistan, CARGO 200 (GRUZ 200) is a dark, absurdist comedy that focuses on the kidnapping of the daughter of a local Communist Party official in rural Soviet Russia in 1984. Based on the book by Mikhail Bulgakov, MORPHIA (MORFIY) is a powerful and bizarre tale that takes us back to 19th century Siberia, where a young doctor descends into drug addiction. Both screenings will be followed by a director Q&A.
The festival’s exploration of new Russian cinema continues with the UK Premiere of CRUSH (KOROTKOYE ZAMYKANIYE), a unique collaboration of five innovative ‘New Wave’ Russian directors (Petr Buslov, Alexei German Jr., Boris Khlebnikov, Kirill Serebrennikov, Ivan Vyrypaev) making cinematic statements about love; RUSSIA 88 (ROSSIYA 88), Pavel Bardin’s highly polemic mocumentary about Moscow’s neo-Nazis; the UK Premiere of BUBEN, BARABAN, Alexei Mizgirey’s intense, Locarno Silver Leopard-winning drama about a librarian forced to steal and sell books from the library to make ends meet; and a late night UK Premiere screening of Alexander Strizhenov’s creepy school horror JULIA (JULENKA).
For further details, please go to www.eastendfilmfestival.com.
We hope you enjoy the new Russian films! Let us know what you think of them on our facebook page!
