Artavazd Peleshyan’s space documentary to be screened in London

PanARMENIAN.Net - The British Film Institute (BFI) is showing an unprecedented retrospective of Russian and Soviet films featuring classic and contemporary movies spanning more than a century of cinema. Billed as КiиО (the half-Russian name given to the project is pronounced Kino, meaning cinema in Russian), the six-month event is big and bold, say the organizers, and brings the best of the past and present to British screens, reported Russia Beyond The Headlines.

“Kino is huge and epic in its scope, and it covers the whole spectrum, from classic icons of Russian heritage right the way through to contemporary films,” said the BFI’s director, Amanda Nevill.

In a three-year project, the organizers of КiиО have collected, restored and brought back to life not only the gems of Russian cinematography but also the best original versions of the pictures, from the classics of early silent movies to notable works from the age of the auteur.

The flagship of the project is one of the all-time classics - Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), which has particular resonance for its British fans: praised in Europe after its release, it was banned in Britain until 1954.

The restored and digitalized version of the film has been released in eight British cinemas and art centers and is accompanied by the music Edmund Meisel played at its world premiere in Berlin in 1925.

The second part of the КiиО program, titled “Cosmos”, is devoted to the conquest of space by Soviet film-makers, and includes remarkable film chronicles of man’s first space flights, including the Armenian director Artavazd Peleshyan’s documentary Our Century , the stark and challenging philosophical parables of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Solaris , and Georgi Daneliya’s satirical sci-fi film Kin-Dza-Dza.