0393 – Hedgehog in the Fog (1975)

Hedgehog in the Fog (Russian: Ёжик в тумане, tr. Yozhik v tumane, IPA: [ˈjɵʐɨk f tʊˈmanʲɪ]) is a 1975 Soviet animated film directed by Yuriy Norshteyn,  produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow.  The script was written by Sergei Kozlov, who also published a book under the same name. In 2006, Norshteyn published a book titled Hedgehog in the Fog, listing himself as an author alongside Kozlov.

Hedgehog in the Fog was ranked #1 in a poll at the 2003 Laputa Animation Festival where 140 animators from around the world voted for the best animated films of all time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog_in_the_Fog#Role_in_Soviet_Animation

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073099/

0384 – The Mystery of the Third Planet (1981)

At the end of the 22nd century Alisa Seleznyova, her father Professor Seleznyov and pilot Zeleny go on a space expedition to find rare animals for Moscow Zoo.

The  Mystery of the Third Planet (Russian: Тайна третьей планеты, Tayna tretyey planety), aka The Secret of the Third Planet is a 1981 Soviet traditionally animated feature film directed by Roman Kachanov and produced by the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow. It is based on a children’s science fiction novella “Alice’s Travel” by Kir Bulychov, from Alisa (Alice) Selezneva book series. 

The movie is considered a cult classic in Russia,  a diafilm and a number of video games were based on The Mystery of the Third Planet, and spiritual successor film Alice’s Birthday was released in 2009.

wiki       imdb

349 – The Russian Woodpecker (2015)

The Russian Woodpecker is a 2015 documentary film written, produced and directed by Chad Gracia following Fedor Alexandrovich’s investigation into the Chernobyl disaster. It is Gracia’s directorial debut feature.

The films focuses on Fedor Alexandrovich’s research into the cause of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine and its potential connection to a Soviet Cold War-era structure, the Duga over-the-horizon radio antenna. His investigation is interrupted and impacted by the 2014 Euromaidan uprising, which eventually led to the ousting of the president Viktor Yanukovych.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082596/

134 – The Way Back (2010)

spacetime coordinates: 1940 Siberia, Soviet Union  Lake Baikal,  Mongolia, Gobi Desert, the Himalayas

 

the Way Back is a 2010 survival drama film directed by Peter Weir, from a screenplay by Weir and Keith Clarke. The film is inspired by The Long Walk (1956), the memoir by former Polish prisoner of war Sławomir Rawicz, who claimed to have escaped from a Soviet Gulag and walked 4,000 miles to freedom in World War II. The film stars Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, and Saoirse Ronan, with Alexandru Potocean, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Gustaf Skarsgård, Dragoş Bucur and Mark Strong.

Regardless of whether or not this particular “long walk” really took place, during World War II other Poles undertook difficult journeys attempting to leave the Soviet Union. Accounts of their escapes can be found in the archives of the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, and in the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, in California. Also, several relatively verifiable and believable escapee autobiographies have been published in English, e.g., Michael Krupa’s Shallow Graves in Siberia.

Many of the events that happen in the gulag scenes come from Varlam Shalamov’s The Kolyma Tales. (read/download PDF here)

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023114/

113 – come and see (1985)

spacetime coordinates: 1943 Byelorussia

(DISTURBING CONTENT)

Come and See (Russian: Иди и смотри, Idi i smotri; Belarusian: Ідзі і глядзі, Idzi i hlyadzi) is a 1985 Soviet war drama film directed by Elem Klimov about, and occurring during, the Nazi German occupation of the Belorussian SSR. Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova star as the protagonists Florya and Glasha. The screenplay by Klimov and Ales Adamovich had to wait eight years for approval; the film was finally produced to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II.

Come and See Glasha Dancing

 The film’s title derives from Chapter 6 of The Apocalypse of John, where in the first, third, fifth, and seventh verses is written “Come and see” (Greek: Ἐρχου καὶ ἴδε, Erchou kai ide) as an invitation to look upon the destruction caused by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See

0040 – georgica (1998)

spacetime coordinate: post-World War II Estonia

Georgica is a 1998 Estonian drama film directed by Sulev Keedus. The film takes its name from Virgil‘s poem of the same name.

The action takes place in post-World War II Estonia. An old man lives alone on a deserted island which the Soviet fighter planes use for nighttime target practicing. A young neglected boy, who has become mute, is banished from the mainland and sent to the island to keep the old man company. Both are haunted by memories, the boy about his mother and the old man about the years before World War I he spent as a missionary in Africa.

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Jakub: If you want to live and survive… then wait… Wait…and do what you’ve got to do. And then…wait again… This is the best thing you can do in this world…
I have seen it and I can tell you… You may push but only slightly… And then wait again… And you’ll live your life – and eat bread and honey… I eat honey –
and translate this old Vergil into Swahili… And I make silage for the animals on the continent… And you too will start talking when the right time has come…
(…) This end of the wax cylinder, it’s still quite empty… This is for you… Then later you can hear what your voice was like – when you were on the island – with an old man, a horse and some bees…

ooo4 – Room and a Half (2009)

(Полторы комнаты или сентиментальное путешествие на родину)

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spacetime coordinate: 40’s > 90’s, Saint Petersburg > New York

When asked in an interview whether he ever intended to return to his Motherland, Joseph Brodsky replied: “Such a journey could only take place anonymously…”

The creators of this film imagined that the journey in question was undertaken after all, selecting the genre of an ironic fairytale. The poet sails to the country of his childhood, and with him we traverse not only geographical expanses, but travel through time as well; stringing together a number of facts from the Nobel Prize Laureate’s biography, we return to the USSR of the 50s and early 60s, soaking up the atmosphere of the “European” city of Petersburg, to this day Russia’s cultural center.  Along with live-action sequences, the film features animation, as well as documentary footage concerning Brodsky and his milieu.

Some of the animated sequences — of winged horses and flying sleds, of Brodsky as a farm animal on all fours drawing a cart — suggest Chagall. Other, more elegant pictures — of pianos and other musical instruments flying in formation while framed against the heroic architecture of St. Petersburg — are closer to Magritte’s surrealism. Visually, it is an ode to St. Petersburg (its museums, architecture and statuary are lovingly photographed), and to the Neva River, which runs by the city.

With its unabashedly nostalgic glow, the film belongs to what might be called the “rosebud” school (after “Citizen Kane”) of film biographies that locate the essence of a life in childhood memories. Recurrent images in the film are visual representations of the family’s house cat. The youthful Brodsky (Evgeniy Ogandzhanyan) is shown conversing with his father in meows and later subverting the solemnity of a school anthem sung by a chorus by substituting cat cries for words. He later confides to a friend that he wants to be reincarnated as a cat in Venice.

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imdb