A Bitter Taste of Freedom

There was no Soviet actor who could claim a greater popularity than Raikin. He was allowed the impossible: to be a satirist. Even during the height of government approved Anti-Semitism, Raikin was a figure to be reckoned with. He was known and beloved by all, his razor-sharp wit admired - and feared. In fact, president Putin met his future wife at a Raikin show. The film follows Raikin to his shows, on stage, and backstage, during rehearsals, at rest, and during conversations with his friends, including legendary Soviet jazz singer Leonid Utesov, film director Yuli Raizman, the poet Bella Ahmadullina, and the American film director George Kukor.

A descendant of the princes of the Meshchersky family, Evgeny, who moved from Ukraine to Russia in 1997 with his wife and three children, is trying to restore the ancestral estate in Alabino near Moscow.

The history of Russian poetry contains a tragic episode: the tragic fate of the legendary Marina Tsvetaeva, who returned to the USSR shortly before the start of World War II, then committed suicide in 1941. The fate of her sister, Anastasia - also a poet - is lesser known, despite the fact that she, too, had a life as interesting and nearly as tragic. This video-portrait of Anastasia Tsvetaeva, shot when she was over 90, is a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman who saw history unfolding. Despite her advanced years, she maintains a bright wit, a charm, and a joie de vivre, evident as she recounts her memories.

When the turmoil of contemporary Russia was settling in the 90th and everyone's existence was starting to resemble some kind of normality, we were wondering what life was like for the generations of Russians who grew up in the midst of oppression,... suffering through wars and revolutions and who during the culmination of their lives, experienced a new world of freedom and democracy and... turmoil. What was it like to go to School in Moscow in the beginning of the thirties? What happened to the students once they graduated and faced the realities of life and how did they... normal, down-to-earth people... weather the storms of their existence?

The characters in this film all lived in the same building: the Knights' House, at 35 Arbat Street in Moscow. Built at the beginning of the century for a few privileged families, this sumptuous residence will become after the revolution a collective apartment building. Like millions of Russians, those who lived together in this building were marked by the trials and tragedies of history. Marina Goldovskaya went in search of the former inhabitants, now dispersed. They speak to us with modesty and emotion about their memories, their secret garden and... their neighbors at 35 Arbat Street.

Valentina Tereshkova's journey from a peasant girl to the first woman in space. After factory work and technical studies, her parachuting hobby led to joining the cosmonaut program, making her a Soviet hero.

Yelena Obraztsova is one of the brightest stars of international opera. She performed, and continues to perform on world stages in the star-studded shows of Herbert von Karajan and Franco Zeffirelli. In this film the great singer is captured during one of her rare visits to her apartment in Moscow along with her long-time accompanist, the piano virtuoso Vaja Chachawa.

A remarkable look at the new life, opportunities and challenges the people of Russia are facing.

The Russian Story profiles Anatoly Rybakov, a best-selling Russian novelist. His personal life follows Russia in the XXth century, a country destroyed in Stalinist purges and in the battlefields of World War II.

Using the example of the family of Nikolai Stepanovich Sivkov, who lives on the Krasnaya Gorka farm in the Arkhangelsk region, the film tells about the difficult problems of implementing a family contract in rural areas. The film touches on the issues of rural labor organization, the place of commodity-money relations in the socialist economy, family work, the meaning, value and costs of self-employment in our society.

Covers six weeks of the lives of Sasha Politkovsky, a prominent TV journalist, and his family. Chronicles the events of 1990 as glasnost and perestroika lift the lid of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union.

Oleg Yefremov was one of the most beloved actors and directors in Russia. He was the founder of the Sovremennik (Contemporary) Theatre and later became the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre. The film shows him in a moment of extreme dramatic tension: Yefremov has decided to split the repertory company into two. His aim is to re energize a stagnant group of actors and move them away from an artistic "dead end". The company, split into supporters and detractors discusses the situation on very heated terms. The situation mirrors the overall climate of a country and a society shaken by the changes brought about by perestroika.

Depicting the collision between past, present, and future in contemporary Russia, the film showcases the filmmaker's understanding, or perhaps her emotions, about Russia's convoluted history.

The film tells about the hard work of glassblowers at the Moscow Factory of electro-vacuum devices.

"Solovky Power" is a documentary about the first Soviet labor camp created by Lenin in 1923. Solovky was established in a complex of ancient monasteries on a cluster of islands off the remote White Sea coast. Though its name derives from the Russian word for nightingale, the title of the film echoes the term 'Soviet power', stressing the fact that from the very beginning the Soviet penal colonies were a world unto themselves.

Over twenty years, the Russian documentary filmmaker Marina Goldovskaya interviewed pioneers of American documentaries, such as Richard Leacock, Robert and Anne Drew, Albert Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, Jonas Mekas, among others. In long conversations, they discuss the elaboration of titles that are now fundamental to the genre’s world history, commenting on the introduction of new light and portable cameras that allowed the advent of Cinema Verite, in addition to sharing the fundamentals and principles of the art of capturing life. The sum of these parts corresponds to a singular opportunity of re-encounter with the thinking of these masters, even those that have already passed away.