Youth on the March! The Rise of the Soviet New Wave

Youth on the March! The Rise of the Soviet New Wave

Youth on the March! The Rise of the Soviet New Wave – a film season in collaboration with MUBI, the UK’s leading online film streaming platform, showcases the Soviet New Wave’s most exhilarating films at Regent Street Cinema from May to June 2018.

Tracing the clash of generations from the Thaw to Perestroika, Youth on the March! The Rise of the Soviet New Wave, is a film season collaboration with our friends at Regent Street Cinema and MUBI. Curated by renowned film critic and journalist Konstantin Shavlovsky, the season moves from last minute rebellion in Otar Iosseliani’s gentle classic Falling Leaves (1966) to punk contempt in Little Vera (1988) as a new generation of Soviet directors break free to shock, satirise and play.

Unlike the classic films of the French New Wave, these films are still unknown outside of Russia. Most will be shown for the first time in the UK, certainly for the first time on their original formats.

Cult directors Otar Iosseliani and Rachid Naugmanov will open and close the Youth on the March! Season at Regent St Cinema.
The films will be screened on original formats or DCPs. They will be introduced by leading directors, film critics and commentators, providing a thrilling insight into the provocative generation of directors who used perestroika to engage with the outside world and create a punk protest cinema that still has resonance today.

Rashid Naugmanov, Kira Muratova and Otar Iosseliani are among the latest directors to confirm their involvement in ‘Youth on the March! The rise of the Soviet New Wave’. This film season will be London’s first ever attempt to trace the antecedents of East European punk at London’s most iconic repertory cinema, the Regent St Cinema on Regent St.

Otar Iosseliani is Georgia’s most celebrated film director and prize winner of films at Berlin, Venice and a Fipresci prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival for ‘Falling Leaves’. The screening of ‘Falling Leaves’ will be a collaboration with the Georgian London Film Festival and followed by a Georgian banquet with some of Georgia’s finest chefs at Terriors, Trafalgar Square on 2nd May.

Rashid Naugmanov is widely seen as the leading director in Kazakhstan’s 1980s New Wave, with Needle winning prizes in Berlin, Toronto and Sundance. The film starred Victor Tsoi, the Soviet Union’s most iconic rock star, who died in a car accident in 1990. Naugmanov will introduce the film in person on Wednesday 20 June.

Kira Muratova is one of the world’s leading female filmmakers. Her iconoclastic filmmaking style means her films have been repeatedly banned or censored. Kino Klassika is proud to present this rare opportunity to see Muratova’s early masterpiece, Long Goodbye, which was banned as soon as it was released. One of the great film rediscoveries of the perestroika period of the 1980s, this film is long overdue a London screening.

The season will take place at Regent St cinema, which is not only London’s oldest cinema hall but has a firm commitment to repertory programming and ambitious world cinema.

CURATOR

Konstantin Shavlovsky
Konstantin is Film Editor of the weekly publication, Kommersant Weekend. He has realized a number of interdisciplinary projects including “House of Voices” in the Museum of Moscow, “Alexey Balabanov. Crossroads” in the Centre for Art and Music, Em. V. Mayakovsky,. He is the Founder of the cultural and educational platform “Order of Words.” He is also Deputy Head of the Cinema section of the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum and a member of the Board of the Guild of Film Experts and Russian film critics.

SEASON DATES
2 May – 27 June

PRESS NIGHT
2 May – early start 7pm followed by a ‘supra’ at Terroirs Trafalgar Square

SCREENING TIMES
7.30pm except for Press Night Otar Iosseliani’s Falling Leaves from 6.30pm

YOUTH ON THE MARCH! THE RISE OF THE SOVIET NEW WAVE

FALLING LEAVES by OTAR IOSSELIANI (1966)
An idealistic young worker discovers the immoral realities of a state-­‐run wine collective in this complex meditation on factory life, disappearing rural traditions and Georgian history.
2 May, 6.30pm

WE’LL LIVE TIL MONDAY by STANISLAV ROSTOTSKY (1968)
A bittersweet comedy about a high school history teacher who must choose between his head and his heart: will he abide by the rules of school or give way to his natural warmth of feeling towards fellow teacher, Natalya?
9 May, 7.30pm

LONG GOODBYE by KIRA MURATOVA (1971)
This little‐known masterpiece by Kira Muratova focuses on the rare narrative of a mother’s overbearing love for her son.
17May, 7.30pm

WOODPECKERS DON’T GET HEADACHES by DINARA ASANOVA (1975)
Young boy Mukha longs to be taken seriously as an adult and a rock musician. When he falls in love one summer, he begins to hear music everywhere, from the rain to the woodpecker’s rattle.
22May,7.30pm

COURIER by KARIN SHAKHNAZAROV (1986)
Russia’s equivalent of the Breakfast Club follows teenager Ivan as he rebels against tradition, in the exciting new world of Adidas, skate-culture, breakdancing and pop music.
30 May, 7.30pm

IS IT EASY TO BE YOUNG? by JURIS PODNIEKS (1987)
Hailed as one of the most controversial films of the era, this ground-breaking documentary is a portrait of rebellious teenagers growing up under communist rule in Latvia.
7 June, 7.30pm

ASSA by SERGEI SOLOVIEV (1987)
The film that brought Russian rock music from the underground into the mainstream, this cult crime classic is the tale of a young nurse, her mafia lover and a young musician.
13 June, 7.30pm

THE NEEDLE by RASHID NUGMANOV (1988)
Part Pulp Fiction, part Betty Blue, Needle charts the attempt of enigmatic drifter Moro, who returns to Almaty to find his ex‐girlfriend stuck in the underground World of drugs, mafia and violence.
20 June, 7.30pm

LITTLE VERA by VASILI PICHUL (1988)
The film that shocked Soviet audiences with on‐screen nudity for the first time, Little Vera is the portrait of a feisty, mean‐minded hellcat who injects chaos into her dull provincial town.
27 June, 7.30pm