CANCELED: The Asthenic Syndrome

(Astenicheskiy sindrom)

All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been temporarily canceled. Learn more

  • Introduction

    Stanislav Menzelevskyi, a film scholar and curator, is head of the Research Department of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center and currently a Fulbright visiting scholar at UC Berkeley.

featuring

Sergei Popov, Olga Antonova, Natalia Busko, Galina Sakurdaeva,

Legendary director Muratova’s demented chronicle of the constant absurdities and insults of Soviet life in the 1980s takes its title and its cues from a psychological condition that alternates between maniacal aggression and apathetic inaction. Fittingly split into two parts, this Ukrainian “post-glasnost film to end all post-glasnost films” (Derek Malcolm) may concern a possibly grieving widow or a possibly insane professor, but it’s the mood of impending collapse and seething madness that matters, not the narrative. “A movie that breaks all the rules when it comes to telling a story and clearly distinguishing between fiction and documentary, fantasy and reality, anger and detachment” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).

—Jason Sanders

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Kira Muratova
  • Sergei Popov
  • Aleksandr Chernitch
Cinematographer
  • Vladimir Pankov
Language
  • Russian
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W/Color
  • DCP
  • 153 mins
Source
  • Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center