Slavic/Central/Eastern European Film Series

All films have English subtitles. All screenings are free of charge and will take place at FLG 225 at 7.15 p.m. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Galina Rylkova (grylkova@ufl.edu), the organizer of the Film Series.

Cukoo [Kukushka]

February 15, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
by Alexander Rogozhkin, 103 minutes / 2002
More from Internet Movie Database

• Starring: Viktor Bychkov, Anni-Kristina Juuso and Ville Haapsalo
• In Russian, Finnish, English subtitles

“Russian writer/director Alexander Rogozhkin set his idiosyncratic anti-war fable in Scandinavia in 1944, just days before Finland, Germany’s ally during the Second World War, surrenders to the Allies. Three people – a wounded Soviet military officer, a pacifist Finnish soldier and a widowed Laplander peasant – are marooned together on the woman’s reindeer farm. The catch: no one speaks or understands the other’s language, a barrier that has both comic and near-tragic ramifications. The Soviet captain repeatedly tries to kill the peace-loving Finn in the mistaken belief that he is German. Anni, who has been without a man since her husband’s death four years ago, can’t believe she suddenly has two men at her disposal. All three actors are wonderful.”-- Jean Oppenheimer.

Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

February 22, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
by Srdjan Dragojevic, 125 minutes / 1996
More from Internet Movie Database

• Starring: Srdjan Dragojevic, Dragan Bjelogrlic

• In Serbian, Croatian, English subtitles

“The story takes place during the first winter of the Bosnian war, when a group of Serb army fighters are trapped by Bosnian soldiers in a deserted railway tunnel; between outbreaks of fighting, the soldiers inside and outside the tunnel provoke each other by exchanging national insults. The key feature of the narrative, however, is that this stand-off between the two sides involved in the conflict, which lasts for ten days, is presented entirely from the perspective of those inside the tunnel, the Serb fighters […] until the very final denouement.”  -- Slavoi Zizek, “Welcome to the Desert of the Real” (2002).

Adam's Rib

March 1, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
by Viatcheslav Krichtofovitch (Ukraine), 75 minutes / 1991
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• Starring: Inna Churikova, Mariia Golubkina, Svetlana Riabova, Elena Bogdanova

• In Russian, English subtitles

Four women spanning three generations live in a shoe-box apartment in Moscow. The bedridden grandmother keeps a tireless eye on her daughter Nina, who must in turn look after her own two daughters, Lida and Nastia (both conceived from different fathers). Adam’s Rib is a delight, an insightful film that portrays daily life of Russian women.

Kolya

March 8, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
by Jan Sverák, 105 minutes / 1997
More from Internet Movie Database

• Starring: Zdenek Sverák, Andrei Chalimon

• In Czeck, Russian, English subtitles

Winner of the 1997 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this charming Czech drama uses the backdrop of the Russian military occupation in Prague for its funny, sad, and ultimately delightful story of a 55-year-old man's friendship with a 5-year-old boy. It doesn't exactly start out as friendship: Louka is a cellist who lost his symphony job after writing a sarcastic remark on an official form, and although he's struggling financially he still enjoys the company of several young women who find him irresistibly sexy. The last thing he needs is a surrogate child, but that's what he gets when young Kolya is abandoned by his mother, a Russian woman Louka had agreed to marry so she could avoid being sent back to Russia. The mother runs off to her boyfriend in Germany, leaving Louka with a 5-year-old kid who only speaks Russian! --Jeff Shannon

The Thief

March 22, FLG 225 at 7.15 p.m.
by Pavel Chukhraj, 93 minutes / 1998
More from Internet Movie Database

• Starring: Vladimir Mashkov, Yekaterina Rednikova, Mischa Philichuk

• In Russian, English subtitles

If you were a widow with a young boy in 1952 Russia, you might take up with a handsome army captain you met on a train. You both would need protection from this post-war world in disarray. And what more solid figure than this officer whose chest proudly displays a tattoo of Stalin? Only the officer is a charismatic but often cruel and despotic thief in disguise named Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov). And the mother Katia (Ekaterina Rednikova), in love despite herself, and the 6-year-old Sanya (Misha Philipchuk), in wide-eyed adoration and fear, are stuck with a nomadic life that demands they relocate whenever their thief-protector's safety becomes chancy. This is the story as you experience it, told in voiceover years later by the boy, a romantic tale of challenged innocence as revisited by experience. And each frame, hazy and tinted with the erosion of memory, seems permeated with the distance between these two Sanyas. The Thief was a 1998 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language film. --Jim Gay

The Double Life of Veronique

by Krzysztof Kieslowski, March 29, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
98 minutes / 1991
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• Starring: Irène Jacob, Wladyslaw Kowalski

• InFrench, Polish, English subtitles

I imagine this film is subtly autobiographical because the director is Polish and yet his films are all made in French. So the two Veroniques could quite possibly be the twin creative personas or muses of Kieslowski himself. The one Veronique is Polish and dies singing, the other lives on in France but with a sense of having missed the one important connection in her life. So the film feels like an allegory of lives or destinies unfulfilled and the most obvious destiny that was cut short was Poland's but this film does not make speeches, it whispers.
As an artist living and creating in exile Kieslowski must himself have felt divided into two parts. Modern life feeling impersonal is a classic theme of the twentieth century yet the way Kieslowski tells it, it does not feel at all clichéd, rather he breathes new life and new understanding into what it means to live in the modern world. His allegory presents a very high vision of humanity which makes us all feel responsible and connected to each other in some way. But the appeal of the film is that it says everything in such an intimate way. Veronique is a film which becomes richer with each viewing. Kieslowski's films tap into a very new kind of place that has no language barriers. His films return to a purity that is almost silent. A universality is present in his art that is quite breathtaking.  - Doug Anderson from Centerville, Ohio.

Father

April 5, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
by Istvan Szabo, 85 minutes / 1966
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• Starring: Andras Baklint, Miklos Gabor, Katalin Solyomi
• In Hungarian, English subtitles

Ever since the death of his father, young Tako has filled the paternal void with a series of fantasies in which his father is envisioned as a partisan freedom fighter, a cultured world traveler and a decorated hero. When he reaches manhood, Tako struggles to live up to the heroic image he crafted, even as he discovers a world in which valor has little place. But he cannot relinquish the comforting daydreams, and as the fantasies he harbors become more elaborate, the mythic father becomes a heroic protector of the Hungarian Jews during the Nazi occupation. By depicting Tako in the wake of World War II and on the brink of revolution in the 1950s, acclaimed filmmaker Istvan Szabo mirrors the confusion of childhood with the turmoil of political upheaval. The result is a simple ode to the human spirit, and a memorable tribute to those determined to survive in the face of adversity.

Peculiarities of the Russian Hunting

April 12, 7:15 p.m., FLG 225
by Aleksandr Rogozhkin, 93 minutes / 1995
More from Internet Movie Database

• Starring: Aleksei Buldakov, Viktor Bychkov

• In Russian, English subtitles

Considered by many the best Russian comedy after perestroika. A group of friends load up with guns, ammunition, vodka and take off for the country side. A bear becomes an alcoholic, a cow goes for a ride in a jet, is shot and then revived; and the vodka is exhausted. Not much hunting takes place, the trip is a riot from start to finish, but, surprisingly, not a great contrast to the stylish demeanor of hunters of the Czarist era. – Tony Naldrett

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