Festival Reports
Birgit Beumers: Kyrgyzstan, a Country not only of Shorts (Arthouse Film Festival 10+)
Birgit Beumers: Phoenix, risen from the ashes: The majestic return of Eurasia IFF
Viktor Dement: The Find by Otto Boele
Aleksei German: Under Electric Clouds by Sergei Toymentsev
Vera Glagoleva: Two Women by Alyssa DeBlasio
Arsenii Gonchukov: The Son by Olia Kim
Natal’ia Kudriashova: Pioneer-Heroes by Daria Ezerova
Liusia Matveeva: The Embroideress by Lars Kristensen
Aleksandr Melnik: Territory by Holly Myers
Mikhail Mestetskii: Rag Union by Lilya Nemchenko
Sergei Mokritskii: The Battle for Sevastopol by Tatiana Filimonova
Ella Omel’chenko: Patients by Arlene Forman
Elnura Osmanalieva: Seide (KYR, short) by Gulbara Tolomushova:
Georgi Ovashvili: Corn Island (GEO) by Elizabeth Papazian
Sergei Popov: The Road to Berlin by Denise Youngblood
Roman Prygunov: Dukh-less 2 by Olga Mukhortova
Marina Razbezhkina: Optical Axis (doc.) by Mieka Erley
Denis Rodimin: The Guest by José Alaniz
Sergei Seregin: The Secret of the Sukharev Tower: Wizard of Balance (anim.) by Laura Pontieri
Artem Temnikov: No Comment by Vincent Bohlinger
Andrei Zaitsev: 14+ by Margarita Levantovskaya
When I launched KinoKultura some twelve years ago, I never thought that the journal would go so long and so far: the first issues were created with basic html (not that there was much else was around at the time), and it was only in 2006 that we changed the design and created KinoKultura’s stark turquoise image. Time has come to make more changes and, for a start, KinoKultura is changing its design with this 50th issue. However, I have decided to leave all the old issues as they were once created, because I think that modern technology, too, should acknowledge that it has a history, and I would like to keep those imprinted in the old-fashioned and now outdated look of the various issues.
None of the development and growth of the journal’s form and content would have been possible without the editorial and advisory boards. Without the numerous (and ever growing number of) contributors, it would have been impossible to build the journal—as Seth Graham charmingly reminds us in his review for this special feature— from an issue with five reviews, four of which were written buy the editor and another one translated by the editor, to a journal with over a dozen films reviewed regularly (and a thanks here to the Russian film industry for picking itself up!), with special issues on national cinemas, and with reviews of films from the former Soviet republics (and a deep bow here to my “agents” in the region, Gulnara Abikeyeva and Gulbara Tolomushova).
To celebrate this 50th issue of the journal, I have invited the editorial and advisory board members to pick what to them would be “the best film of the post-Soviet era” and review it. Actually, this was an idea that sprang from a conversation with the journal’s co-editor Julian Graffy: we thought that could be a kind of “rating” of post-Soviet films, and reviewers could cast a new light on some films that may have been under- or over-rated at the time, or that might now be read in a different light. Here they are:
Christine Engel: Andrei Proshkin’s The Horde (2012)
Mark Lipovetsky: Mikhail Segal’s Short Stories (2012)
Greg Dolgopolov: Konstantin Buslov’s Loot (2011)
Rimgaila Salys: Valerii Todorovskii’s Hipsters (2008)
Seth Graham: Aleksei Balabanov’s Cargo 200 (2007)
Stephen Norris: Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2005)
Jeremy Hicks: Nikolai Dostal’s Penal Battalion (2005)
Julian Graffy: Petr Buslov’s Bimmer (2003)
Nancy Condee: Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002)
Anthony Anemone: Aleksei Balabanov’s Brother (1997)
Elena Prokhorova: Aleksandr Rogozhkin’s Peculiarities of the National Hunt (1995)
Alexander Prokhorov: Leonid Gaidai’sThere's Good Weather on Deribasovskaya, It’s Raining Again in Brighton Beach (1992)
Nina Tsyrkun: Sergei Iurskii’s Chernov/Chernoff (1990)
Birgit Beumers, Bristol, 8 October 2015