Film Screening and Discussion: Shakespeare in Russia

Hamlet (Russian: Гамлет, tr. Gamlet)

is a 1964 film adaptation in Russian of William Shakespeare’s play of the same title, based on a translation by Boris Pasternak. It was directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Iosif Shapiro, and stars Innokenty Smoktunovsky as Prince Hamlet.

Repentance – Покаяние

”Repentance,” a complex, coherent metaphor of the evil of tyranny, is the creation of Tengiz Abuladze, a Soviet Georgian film maker. His attack on Stalinism and the heirs of Stalin has been seen by millions of people in the Soviet Union, and ”Repentance” was the country’s nominee for an Academy Award for best foreign film.

Kozintsevs KING LEAR

The tale of an ageing monarch
descending into madness

following the division of his kingdom is filtered through a Communist perspective by Russian director Grigori Kozintsev in the latter’s final film.

Юрий Векслер – Высокая болезнь театра

Название отсылает к одноименной поэме Бориса Пастернака. «Высокая болезнь театра» означает влюбленность и помешательство на всю жизнь. Сам Пастернак, переведший немало пьес Шекспира тоже был болен театром.

 

(Mainly in Russian, casual translation can be provided)

Hamlet with Russian Eyes

.. have another ‘double-feature’ for you, this time with Shakespeare
With the Kozintsev rendition of King Lear to be announced later
in April, for our next screening we give you Kozintsevs

Hamlet

(Soviet Union, 1964)

Марианна Рошаль – лента жизни

вечер живого диалога с Наташей Рубинштеин

Этим вечером вам предоставится уникальная возможность встретиться с режиссером и писательницей, являющейся свидетельницей и активной участницей формирования отечественного кинематографа времен Эйзенштейна, хрущевской ‘Оттепели’ и брежневского застоя.
(in Russian – translation NOT provided)

A ‘double take’ – Twelve chairs

with the day before – TWELVE CHAIRS by Leonid Gaidar

Soviet Union in the 1920s. Ippolit (Ron Moody), an impoverished aristocrat, now village bureaucrat, is summoned to the deathbed of his mother-in-law. She reveals that a fortune in jewels had been hidden from the Bolsheviks in the cushion of one of the twelve chairs from the family’s dining room set.

A ‘double take’ – Двенадцать стульев

with the following day – TWELVE CHAIRS by Mel Brooks

a classic satirical novel (read it here) that sees its anti-heroes in

“a series of comic adventures, including living in a students dormitory with plywood walls, posing as bill painters on a riverboat to earn passage, bamboozling a village chess club with promises of an international tournament, and traveling on foot through the mountains of Georgia.”

– from Wikipedia

FORGOTTEN TUNE FOR FLUTE – Eldar Ryazanov

О смене эпох, удивительной касте советских чиновников, предательстве, стяжательстве, слабохарактерности, верности, любви и смерти.

Walking with Brodsky – at Open Russia

Give me another life, and I’ll be singing in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner, in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.Give me another life, and I’ll be singing in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner, in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

 

To those who love the poetry of Brodsky,

or else want to encounter his life and work, are cordially invited to a remembrance evening of Joseph Brodsky at the Open Russia Club.