Mother Russia

By: BabaYaga

BABA YAGA IS AGAINST! – 1980 – Vladimir Pekar
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When Misha the Bear is chosen as the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games, Baba Yaga sets out to wreak revenge and become the mascot herself.

STORY OF THE VOYAGES – 1982 – Aleksandr Mitta
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This is the story of a girl, Martha, whose brother, Mai, possesses a unique gift, he can find buried treasures. But it makes him very ill, and Martha prefers to live in poverty rather than make her little brother suffer. However, not everybody is just as concerned about Mai’s well-being, and one Christmas, Mai is kidnapped. Martha decides to search for her brother, and her story begins. On the way, she meets a genius inventor, Orlando, and they travel together meeting various people, and most of these encounters threaten disaster to Martha and Orlando. -kriemhild_h imdb review

THE PROMISED LAND – 1992 – Shain Sinariya
A boy and his mother pay a visit to the father’s grave… and the land of the dead. The youtube link below has english subs

MEDIATOR – 1990 – Vladimir Potapovimdb link
In a forest not far from a small provincial Soviet town, falls a black sphere of extraterrestrial origin. An alien force possesses the minds of those it comes in contact with, suppressing their will and slowly infiltrating the local community. A large radio telescope outside town is its target, a means of signaling a mass invasion of Earth. This movie originally premiered on Soviet TV in 3 parts, which when watched together add up to an epic three and a half hours of brilliance. It’s basically a very simple body snatchers plot presented in a very stylish manner as every single shot in this film is exquisitely framed and heavily feature muted sepia tones, with occasional dollops of bright red. -nonsuckynineties.blogspot.com

THROUGH THE CEMETERY – 1964 – Viktor Turov
The action takes place in autumn of 1942. The German army is approaching Stalingrad and a group of Belorussian partisans decide to cause a disruption on the railroad. Victor Turov’s full-length debut film laid the foundation for Belorussian “partisan cinema” aesthetics. In 1995, the film was included in the list of 100 best war films by Unesco.

FOUNTAIN – 1988 – Yuri Mamin
imdb link
The story concerns an elderly Asian man who leaves his isolated desert homeland to live with his daughter in a typical Russian city, a place that is bizarre to him, never having known any modern technology. Only his daughter can talk to him and understand him. Her husband (who gives the old man a job watching over water pipes in the building basement) and his friend (who is kinda like the superintendent) struggle to keep their old decrepit building from literally falling apart through different escalating disasters that the tenants must deal with. As the film progresses, the building and the tenants start to crack (literally and figuratively) under some sort of stress, and people resort to stranger, funnier and crazier ways of expressing themselves and the dealing with the situation. All the characters go through hilarious situations, some funny, some are sad, but a humor always keeps the viewer hopeful. -WeGetIt imdb review

VELDT – 1987 – Nazim Tulyakhodzayev, Ray Bradbury
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Taking its inspiration from the Ray Bradbury book of the same name, Veld concerns Linda and Mike, a couple living in a state-of-the-art house which has been designed to gratify their every need. The “nursery”, actually a large virtual reality booth, has the power to recreate any place on earth, and is a favorite hangout for the couple’s kids, Peter and Wendy. Convinced that this way of life has destroyed the family entirely, Linda and Mike become withdrawn and childish, leaving Peter and Wendy to usurp them at the top of the family unit in a bizarre role reversal. Speaking to a psychiatrist, Mike begins to decode the children’s obsession with the nursery and, before long, his fear of this self-aware house is realized. Technology is the true enemy here, stealing power from the last generation and giving it to the next. -celluloidbreakfast.blogspot.com

THIRD PLANET – 1991 – Aleksandr Rogozhkin
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A father wants to cure his daughter’s rare illness, so he was told about special radiation zone where natural doctors live who can cure anything. So the father takes his daughter and they go to the zone. The views of this movie sometimes remind of Chernobyl, but the territory where the film was shot looks even more beyond. -andreygrachev imdb review

TRAGEDY IN ROCK – 1988 – Savva Kulish
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Tragedy in Rock takes on sex, drugs, and rock and roll as symptoms of a sick society rather than as causes of rebellion. Victor, an idealistic eighteen-year old who looks like a Soviet yuppie, descends through an inferno of Soviet subculture, becoming a drug addict, a dealer, a lost soul. –Brashinsky, The zero hour.

BOYS – 1991 – Yuri Grigoryev, Fyodor Dostoevsky
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The Boys is based on the Alyosha/Kolya Krasotkin/Ilyusha subplot in The Brothers Karamazov. This particular scene is in Book X, Chapter 3. The director is Yuri Grigoryev and Kolya is played by Alyosha Dostoevsky, the great-great grandson of the author. -Lenskii youtube description.

DOLL – 1988 – Isaak Fridberg
imdb link
Kukolka tells the story of a young Russian gymnastics star who is forced to return to the life of an ordinary teenage girl after an injury prevents her from competing. As the film unfolds, the audience is drawn into the damaged psyche of the girl and the world that shaped her. The story is dark, intense, and ultimately disquieting; it draws you in, horrifies you, and keeps you thinking long after the superb finale. -imdb review by tangofiction

SIDEBURNS – 1990 – Yuri Mamin
imdb link
A small provincial town is home to two rival teenage gangs, one devoted to loose living and punk music and the other a collection of narrow-minded bodybuilders obsessed with order and convinced of their own moral rectitude. However, this cosy state of affairs is upset by the arrival of two strangers dressed like Pushkin, the famous early 19th century Russian poet, who proceed to found their own organization, dedicated ostensibly to the memory of the great writer and the “salvation of Russia”. Gradually, they begin to assume control of the town… Maywin Media AB from imdb

WHITE FEAST – 1994 – Vladimir Naumov
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The story, set in an unnamed Russian city, follows an old man, known simply as the Professor, who approaches a local detective to track someone—himself. The detective is to follow him, noting his every action, without asking questions. In a single day, the men trek through the city, visiting a bath house, a local open-air market, and a brothel where the Professor finds the daughter he lost contact with some time before. Long stretches of action are silent, but director Vladimir Naumov and cinematographer Lomer Akhvlediany convey through metaphors the dilemma of a Russian populace struggling to define its identity in a country awash with change. Their symbols become clear: the Professor’s imless wanderings, the long dark coat he will not shed—even in the bath house, his attraction to the densely populated and chaotic paintings of Breughel and Bosch. In a city eroding with decay yet blanketed with sno, the people are taunted by the deceptive mirage of capitalism and forced, ultimately, to assess their shattered dreams just as the professor assesses his own. -Lael Loewenstein from boxofficemagazine.com

CHELOVEK K. – 1992 – Sergei Rahmanin
Based on biographical motives from Kafka’s journals, the discord between reality and imagination is explored through a writer’s sordid path to self-knowledge.