Farewell: A Tribute to Elem Klimov and Larissa Shepitko

9/24/05 to 10/29/05

The Ascent, September 24

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Past Films

Sport, Sport, Sport
- Saturday, October 29 17:45
What is the Soviet athlete's secret to success? Klimov's early satire uses documentary, old newsreels, and fiction to ponder this national obsession, from the torture of training to the politics of winning.
Come and See
- Saturday, October 29 19:30
A boy partisan witnesses the everyday horrors of the Nazi occupation of Byelorussia in this testament to the surreal madness of war, and the facts of the Russian experience. "Dazzling filmmaking; towering, cathartic."-London Film Festival
Farewell
- Saturday, October 22 19:00
When an island in Central Siberia is to be submerged by the building of a dam and the villagers moved to the mainland, the elderly women on the island vow to stay behind. "An assured, elegiac evocation of a virtually pagan world, both defined and doomed by its traditions."-Time Out. With short Larissa, a tribute to Shepitko by her husband Klimov.
Agonia-Rasputin
- Saturday, October 15 19:00
Klimov's rendition of the Rasputin story may be over-the-top, in keeping with the infamous charlatan himself, but a restored print of this much-tampered-with film offers new revelations about what a thinking Russian makes of an extraordinarily bizarre episode in the nation's history.
Heat
- Saturday, October 8 17:00
Shepitko's prizewinning first film about futile attempts at modernization on the arid Kirghiz steppes. "The images have an extraordinary intensity."-Film Center, Chicago
Wings
- Saturday, October 8 19:00
"A lovely and nuanced character study of a once-famous World War II fighter pilot who becomes a provincial schoolmistress. . . . Stately and reflective in tempo."-Chicago Reader
You and I
- Saturday, October 8 20:50
A scientist in midlife crisis flees to Siberia in this daring drama, "in every way as fascinating as Tarkovsky's Solaris, and signifying a major talent in the Soviet Union."-International Film Guide
Welcome (No Trespassing)
- Saturday, October 1 19:00
Klimov's hilarious first film, set in a Young Pioneers camp, is "a witty, biting satire on the Soviet way of living. . . . Nothing was forbidden, but of course nothing was possible either."-Marina Goldovskaya
Adventures of a Dentist
- Saturday, October 1 20:45
Klimov's second comedy riled the authorities with its depiction of a shy dentist who gains fame for inventing a painless way of pulling teeth and suffers the consequences of being young, gifted, and Soviet.
The Ascent
- Saturday, September 24 19:00
The partisan struggle against the Nazis in WWII provides the setting for a timeless work of art in Shepitko's The Ascent. "In the entire history of cinema, a handful of films have captured the transcendent, revelatory moment of spiritual triumph in the face of an impossibly painful reality . . . a profoundly moving experience."-Filmex '78. Shown with Homeland of Electricity, Shepitko's visually stunning short film on the aftermath of the October Revolution.

Farewell: A Tribute to Elem Klimov and Larissa Shepitko

9/24/05 to 10/29/05

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...

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.

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Farewell: a Tribute to Elem Klimov and Larissa Shepitko is a presentation of Seagull Films in collaboration with the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography and Cineconcern Mosfilm. Generous support for the series is provided by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, George Gund III, and Iara Lee. Special thanks are due to Richard Pena, Tench Coxe, Alexander Ikonnikov, and Galina Peshkova.