Once upon a time, the Ukrainian-born Larissa Shepitko and Russian Elem Klimov were Soviet cinema's first couple-talented, charismatic, articulate, and beautiful. Both gifted directors, they worked separately, until Farewell, in 1979. Shepitko's death in a car accident on the first day of shooting led to Klimov directing the film. She was forty years old, had just taken the Golden Bear at Berlin for The Ascent, and, with her small body of work known for its beauty, penetrating insight, and spiritual concerns, seemed poised to join Tarkovsky as one of the most important auteurs of the “new generation.” Klimov's early satires, meanwhile, had him pegged as “the Soviet Milos Forman,” but ethics and morality were always at the core of his films, even the comedies. In addition to the elegiac Farewell, he created a uniquely Russian expression of his country's history in Agonia, about Rasputin, as well as one of the most searing films ever made on the Russian experience of WWII, Come and See. All their films were controversial, and thus endangered. As the elected head of the Union of Cinematographers at the beginning of perestroika, Klimov set the standard for the movement by helping rehabilitate banned films and directors and promoting daring new work.
Both Shepitko and Klimov, who died in 2003, were memorable guests of PFA. Farewell offers our first opportunity to observe the extraordinary dialogue that exists between their bodies of work.