The Klassiki Podcast

It’s time for this season’s edition of the Kino Club, our watch-along exploration of the Klassiki catalogue. This time round, I caught up with the great Ukrainian critic and researcher Sonya Vseliubska, whose writing you can find in all your favourite outlets, including the Klassiki Journal. Sonya was sent rummaging through our library to find a film that she hadn’t seen before to watch and discuss. Her pick was Three, the 1965 World War Two drama from acclaimed Yugoslav director Aleksandar Petrović. Among other things, Sonya is an expert on the history and aesthetics of war films, so we had plenty to talk about. Together with host Sam Goff, she gets into the film’s triptych structure, its subversion of patriotic narratives, and how it relates to the contemporary cinema of war coming out of Ukraine.  Watch along with us on Klassiki now! Make sure to check out Sonya’s writing. And if you want more Yugoslav cinema, you can explore our collection of titles and read our companion to the country’s Black Wave movement here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Here at Klassiki, we’re very excited about our forthcoming season of screenings inspired by the pioneering science fiction of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. After Utopia: the Strugatsky Brothers on Film is presented in partnership with Pushkin House and will be bringing four film adaptations of the Brothers’ works to London screens between 6-13 November. The Strugatskys dominated Soviet sci-fi with their philosophical, subversive, and hugely popular stories, which have long proven compelling to filmmakers. And no director did more with their work than the great Aleksei German in his posthumous, mud-soaked masterpiece Hard to Be a God. This week, Sam speaks with film scholar Muireann Maguire, Professor in Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter, about the Strugatsky’ philosophical parables, German’s unique approach to cinema, and how the two collided onscreen. After Utopia: the Strugatsky Brothers on Film runs from 6-13 November at the ICA, the Garden Cinema, and Pushkin House, featuring screenings of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Aleksandr Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse, Grigori Kromanov’s Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel, and Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God.  Watch three more Aleksei German titles on Klassiki here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal and hailing the Halloween season with an essay on the things that went bump in the night in Soviet cinema. The USSR wasn’t renowned for its horror, but in films like the cult classic Viy, directors were occasionally able to create gruesome and thrilling spectacles. The inspiration for many of these films was the writing of Nikolai Gogol, which drew on the folklore of his native Ukraine to imagine a world populated by malignant spirits. Gogol has cast a long shadow over cinema beyond his influence on horror, providing a version of Ukrainian national history and culture that influenced some of the nation’s most important filmmakers. Read the original piece here. Our Halloween offering for subscribers this year is Kazakh Scary Tales, a folk horror anthology film from maverick director Adilkhan Yerzhanov, which is available on the site from this Thursday 29 October. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

On Klassiki, we’re currently celebrating the work of the great Hungarian director István Szabó with restorations of two of his new wave classics, Father and The Concert. To go a little deeper on Szabó’s fascinating filmography, which stretches over six decades and has garnered awards from Cannes to the Oscars, this week Sam catches up with our friend Carmen Gray, a critic and programmer specialising in the cinema of eastern Europe and the Caucasus.  Sam and Carmen explore Szabó’s lifelong project – chronicling the tragic twentieth-century history of Hungary and its Central European neighbours – with reference to his celebrated trilogy of historical dramas, Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985), and Hanussen (1988). They discuss their theatricality, deconstruction of identity and sexuality, and how they reflect Szabó’s own life experiences.  Watch restorations of István Szabó’s sixties classics Father and The Concert on Klassiki now.  You can also read our companion piece on his career over on the Journal and check out our pod episode on his 1980 melodrama Confidence with critic Alisa Goruleva here.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Estonian director Leida Laius was an unsung pioneer. Working from the sixties until the fall of communism, her films are striking for their empathetic exploration of the lives of women, from motherhood and marriage to sexuality. While she’s heralded in her homeland, like many female directors, her international reputation hasn’t kept pace with her talents – although there are welcome signs that this is changing, with a slew of new restorations and repertory screenings in recent years. One such retrospective took place at the Spectacle Theater in New York earlier this year, programmed by critic and curator Kat Docalovich. This week, Sam is joined by Kat and Baltic cinema expert Josh Polanski to discuss the life and times of Leida Laius.  You can watch restorations of Laius’s final two films, Smile at Last and A Stolen Meeting, on Klassiki now, and read more about her work over on our Journal.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Welcome listeners old and new to season eight of the Klassiki Podcast. We’ve got ten more episodes coming up for you to take us up to the festive season, with returning guests and new voices, covering the great and the good of Eastern European film. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss an episode.  Sergei Loznitsa remains one of the biggest draws in Eastern European cinema today. The Ukrainian filmmaker moves freely between fiction and both observational and archival documentaries in his efforts to excavate the dark depths of Russian and Soviet history. His latest feature, Imperium, premiered at Venice earlier this year and is now coming to the UK this month as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It’s perhaps Loznitsa’s most ambitious archival documentary yet. Using a treasure trove of newly uncovered footage captured in the early seventies by visiting Italian filmmakers, Loznitsa constructs a vast and partisan panorama of life under communist rule, from the Baltic Sea to the Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan. Ahead of its London bow, host Sam Goff spoke with the director about taking the pluge with this material, the history of Soviet documentary, and the enduring power of national cultures.  The 70th BFI London Film Festival is taking place from 7-18 October. Find out more and stay tuned to the Klassiki Podcast and Journal for more coverage. You can get tickets for the screening of Imperium on Tuesday 13 October here.  Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

That’s a wrap on season seven of the podcast. As always, thank you for listening along. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss us when we return for season eight in the autumn. And please, leave us a five-star rating and share the show far and wide so we can continue to grow. Thank you.  The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival has just come to a close. Every year, this resort town on the shores of Lake Maggiore hosts to one of the world’s most rewarding festivals, balancing arthouse favourites with a ready supply of lesser-known talent. Friend of the show Sona Karapoghosyan – critic and programmer for Armenia’s Golden Apricot Film Festival – has been back in Locarno this year, serving as a member of the FIPRESCI Jury for the international competition. Sam caught up with her before the award winners were announced to chat about some East European and Caucasian titles from the programme – including what turned out to be the top prize winner, with the Golden Leopard going to Romanian stalwart Florin Șerban’s You Don’t Belong Here. Also up for discussion are I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, Isabelle Stever’s transgender romance from wartime Ukraine, and Demons, Natalka Vorozhbyt’s darkly supernatural Russia-Ukraine allegory. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The forest is one of the prevailing symbols of Russia and its former imperial holdings: from the Baltic to the taiga to the Pacific. But how has the forest informed Russia’s sense of itself and its place in the world? This is the question at the heart of Sophie Pinkham’s new book, The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires: a cultural and environmental history about the role of the forest in making and resisting the Russian and Soviet states, stretching from the Bronze Age to the war on Ukraine.  This week, Sam invites Sophie onto the pod to discuss the forest on film. How have filmmakers related to the Russian forest and what do their films tell us about Russian and Soviet colonialism and environmentalism? Sam and Sophie explore all this, as well as pagans, geologists, and partisans, with reference to cinematic classics including Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, and Larisa Shepitko.  Make sure to check out Sophie Pinkham’s book The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Among his many achievements, the Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins is perhaps best known for his sprawling documentaries charting the history of cinema: The Story of Film: An Odyssey, originally released in 2011, and Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, from 2019. Now, Mark is back with a third entry in this pantheon: The Story of Documentary Film. Like its predecessors, it's an epic undertaking, with 16 hour-long chapters running from the 19th century to the present day and ranging all across the globe, examining the political, social, and aesthetic factors that have shaped documentary, with examples ranging from the canonical to the deliciously obscure.  This week, host Sam Goff sits down with Mark for a fittingly wide-ranging conversation about how he approaches these long-form odysseys, his personal experiences in Eastern Europe, from visiting Moscow during perestroika to watching films in bomb shelters in Sarajevo, and some of his favourite filmmakers from the region. Explore Klassiki’s collection of documentary titles here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Long time listeners of the show will be familiar with the film historian Ian Christie, who’s joined us to discuss topics ranging from Aleksandr Sokurov to Powell and Pressburger, the Soviet avant-garde to The Saragossa Manuscript. His new book, The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema, collects writings and interviews from decades of pioneering work on subjects ranging from the silent era to contemporary figures like Andrei Zvyagintsev.  Ian spent the final years of the Soviet era travelling back and forth to the USSR, witnessing the social and cultural revolution that was unfolding and befriending many of the leading figures in the film industry. This week, host Sam Goff invites Ian back on the pod to reflect on those experiences and to share his memories of encounters with artists like Andrei Tarkovsky, Kira Muratova, Elem Klimov, and many more.  The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema is on sale now from Sticking Place Books.  Klassiki subscribers can explore a special watchlist featuring many of the films that Ian discusses on this episode here. Get in touch: [email protected]. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.