>If the American middle really is this blandly tolerant, who keeps
>electing all those yahoos to public office? Can't be the downscale -
>they don't vote; can't be the upper class - there aren't enough of
>them. Maybe behind the apolitical contentment lurks a lot more
>alienation and rage than Wolfe can see. But on the face of it, it's
>amazing how much his middle America sounds like, of all things, the
>USSR in its heyday, post-Gulag and pre-Gorby. Here's Henri
>Lefebvre's description of the moral code of Homo sovieticus from the
>early 1960s:
>
>"This code can be summed up in a few words: love of work (and work
>well done, fully productive in the interests of socialist society),
>love of family, love of the socialist fatherland. A moral code like
>this holds the essential answer to every human problem, and its
>principles proclaim that all such problems have been resolved. One
>virtue it values above all others: being a 'decent' sort of person,
>in the way that the good husband, the good father, the good workman,
>the good citizen are 'decent sorts of people....'"
>
>Change "socialist" to "American," and you've pretty much got it.
>Oxygen, please!
Hey, don't underestimate Homo sovieticus!
***** Films from the Soviet Sixties
This selection of films highlights the remarkable new wave of innovation and openness achieved by Soviet filmmakers during the 1960s. Augmenting the films is French film legend Chris Marker's recent documentary tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich.
The Letter Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1959) Heat (Larissa Shepitko, 1963) Thu, Apr 5 / 7 pm Film/Video Theater
>From the director of such classics as I Am Cuba and The Cranes Are
Flying, Kalatozov's The Letter Never Sent (98 mins.) follows four
geologists sent to primeval Siberia to locate diamond deposits.
Along the way they encounter every conceivable natural disaster,
causing the narrator to reflect on the human pain sacrificed for the
advancement of science.
>From the tragically short-lived female director Larissa Shepitko,
Heat (85 mins.) is a post-Stalinist allegory that focuses on the
conflict that erupts on a state farm when modern methods are
introduced to traditional practices. Made on the barren steppes of
central Asia, the film won Shepitko Grand Prize for new director at
the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Goodbye, Boys (Mikhail Kalik, 1964) The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, 1970) Thu, Apr 12 / 7 pm Film/Video Theater
Virtually suppressed until the fall of Communism, Goodbye, Boys (97 mins.) is a wistful evocation of three lazy teenagers' summer days cut short by the encroaching military draft. Lyrical moments are intercut with newsreel footage, contrasting the innocence of their youth with the dark realities of their future.
In The Debut (91 mins.), Panfilov's own wife appears as a naïve but excitable factory worker who is unexpectedly chosen to star in a movie about Joan of Arc. Its odd mix of comedy and pathos helped the film win the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion.
One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (Chris Marker, 2000) Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962) Thu, Apr 19 / 7 pm Film/Video Theater
Produced for the French television series Film in Our Time, Chris Marker's One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (55 mins.) intercuts clips from both Tarkovsky's well-known films (Stalker, Solaris, and Andrei Rublev) and his rarely screened student films with documentary sequences of the Russian director as he lay dying in Paris. At the core of Marker's film resides his extraordinary affinity for Tarkovsky's work and their trusting personal relationship. As Jonathan Rosenbaum notes, "It's the best single piece of Tarkovsky criticism I know of, clarifying the overall coherence of his oeuvre while leaving all the principal mysteries in the films intact."
Tarkovsky's feature debut, Ivan's Childhood (a.k.a. My Name Is Ivan; 95 mins.) remains one of the landmarks of postwar world cinema. Mixing lyrical narrative with flashbacks, dreams, and newsreels, it tells the story of a young orphaned boy killed in the waning days of WWII.
Revolution in the Revolution: Films from the Soviet Sixties was originally presented last fall by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Seagull Films.
<http://www.wexarts.org/fv/> *****
Also see <http://www.nga.gov/programs/flmsoviet.htm>.
Yoshie