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 Rave film reviewer, TIM MILFULL managed a sneak preview of some of the films screening at the RUSSIAN RESURRECTION FILM FESTIVAL.
Featuring dogs in space, frozen miracles, andflying cars – the 2010 Russian Resurrection Film Festival comes to town on the 1st September, kicking off with a blockbuster based upon a true story. Kandahar – not the bleak film of the same name made by Iranian exile, Mohsen Makhmalbaf – recounts the experiences of a Russian flight crew at the hands of the Taliban in the mid-nineties after their massive Ilyushin-76 air-freighter was impounded due to accusations of arms smuggling.
One War takes audiences to a little-known island in northern Russia in 1945, where a skeleton crew of female prisoners and their children act as caretakers for the facility until the army arrives to set up a secret training base. As a dour Major arrives to coordinate the construction, he grapples with the idea that these woman branded as collaborators with the Germans might not all be the traitors they appear to be. Despite hopes that the recent declaration of peace might mean amnesty, prisoners and guards alike on the island recognise that some things are too good to be true, and the resulting drama is heartbreaking.
Konstantin Khabensky – who starred in the 2009 festival’s epic, Admiral – plays Artemyev, a cynical journalist in Alexander Proshkin’s The Miracle, based upon a true story in 1959 that featured the frozen form of a woman who had been dancing with a religious icon depicting St Nicholas. Sent to investigate the strange event by his editor, Artemyev has to balance his own scepticism, the questionable ideology of the Communist state, and a secret personal connection with the grubby industrial town that has embraced the miracle and offers a frustrating headache for the Party.
In Parental Guidance – which celebrates its world premiere in this festival – Kandahar director, Andrei Kavun moves away from the drama of global politics to the politics of the personal, as he tells the story of four beautiful young people who are on the cusp of adulthood, with all its potential and possibility. While two young men compete for the attentions of a gorgeous woman, her dowdy friend harbours a secret crush that might just come to fruition. Slick, funny, and often infuriating, Parental Guidance offers an inside look into the mores of Russia’s GenY.
A little more disturbing than the other films I saw, Valeria Gai Germanic’s Everybody Dies But Me moves away from the documentary format that made the controversial director famous, and turns to powerful fiction to tell the story of three adolescent girls struggling to cope with the pressures of high school, from peer pressure and bullying, to ignorance, indifference and abuse at home. Focusing on the fragile friendship of the trio, the film reaches a violent and quite upsetting climax at the disco everybody has been looking forward to. This very confronting and honest filmmaking reveals the raw and difficult nature of adolescence.
 There are more than twenty-five films screening at the festival this year, including the Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang inspired Black Lightning, the kid-friendly Belka & Strelka: Space Dogs In 3D, and a comprehensive Second World War retrospective featuring rarely screened films from the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky – Ivan’s Childhood (1962) – and Larissa Shepitko’s Golden Bear-winning The Ascent (1977) And finally, something special for the cinephiles: German – The Other Side Of The Camera, which documents the life of Alexei German, the Saint Petersburg director who also has two of his famous films screening in the WWII Retrospective –Twenty Days Without War, and Trial On The Road.
RUSSIAN RESURRECTION 2010 runs at Palace Centro Sep 1 – Sep 8. The complete programme of films screening at the festival can be viewed at www.russianresurrection.com.au
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