Well, you can't talk to the Father of the Peoples himself, but if you're in New York, you can talk to his great-grandson during the Q&A after his movie gets shown.
Screening Soviet historyNew focus is film by Stalin kinBy MILA ANDREDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERCircle May 9 on the calendar.Not just because that's when several films by an accomplished Moscow-traineddirector named Vissarion Jugashvili will be shown here for the first time, butbecause the 38-year-old filmmaker is Soviet dictator Josef Stalin'sgreat-grandson.The screening is part of the "Bringing New Names" program of the Red ShiftFestival, founded by Yuriy Gavrilenko. It is being held in conjunction with theFederation of East Village Artists and the Howl Film Festival on the day Russiacelebrates the end of World WarII.Stalin, who led the Soviet Union through the war, had changed his name fromJugashvili as a young revolutionary. His adopted name means "man of steel."The filmmaker, who came to the United States about a year and a half ago fromhis native Georgia (a former Soviet republic), graduated from the Moscow Academyfor Film Sreenwriters and Directors.Films of his that will be shown
include the six-minute "Kamen" ("The Stone"),made in 1996. His first work as a screenwriter and director, it has won severalawards at international festivals.The 10-minute black-and- white 1997 comedy "All-Consuming Power of Art" and"Court Tale," a one-act Moscow theater production, also will be screened.But it's "Yakov, Stalin's Son," a 60-minute documentary that Jugashvili madeabout his grandfather, that will certainly arouse the most interest. He made thefilm in Germany in 2001 in collaboration with Eric Tesch.Yakov, the elder son of the iron-fisted ruler of the Soviet Union, served as anartillery officer in the struggle against the Nazis that Russians call "TheGreat Patriotic War."The story of his capture by the Nazis near Vitebsk, in Belorussia, in August1941 and subsequent imprisonment in Germany as Hitler's "Hostage Number I," iswell-known both in Russia and in Germany.Though the Third Reich tried to turn Yakov against his country and his father,it could not. On April 14,
1943, after Russians defeated the Nazi armies at theBattle of Stalingrad, Yakov was shot to death by a warden in the Zachsenhausenconcentration camp, not far from Berlin.Of all his films, "Yakov" "was the most difficult to do," Jugashvili confided."We had many conflicts with the production on the German side. I wanted to getto the truth of Yakov and to show him from a familial side; they only sawStalin's son and did not want to separate him as a person."The most important thing for them [the Germans]," Jugashvili continued, "wasthat he lived in the shadow of his father, Stalin, and that's why he ended hislife the way he did. For me, who never knew either my grandfather or mygreat-grandfather, it was more of a searching for roots than for the politicalimplications of that time."The film seeks to discover what gave Yakov the strength to face death and todemystify the stories that surround him by following him from a mountain villagein Georgia to Germany.Says Jugashvili: "For myself, I
have found that for which I was searching;whether it will be obvious in the film. ..."Films will be shown May 9 at 7 p.m. at the Pioneer Theater, 155 E. Third St.(corner of Avenue A). There will be a question-and-answer session after thescreening.For information, call (212) 505-2225.
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