The Asthenic Syndrome
Absurdity was a reality in the socialist republics of Eastern Europe until 1989. It was a response to the failures of the public services, to the pretenses, to the feeling of physical confinement. More than in Western Europe, the absurd in the East was a concrete and daily experience. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the former "People's Republics", we present works from Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the former East Germany, the former Czechoslovakia. Most of the films are the first digital restorations. Guest programmer: Gabriel M. Paletz.
Legendary director Muratova’s demented chronicle of the constant absurdities and insults of Soviet life in the 1980s takes its title and its cues from a psychological condition that alternates between maniacal aggression and apathetic inaction. Fittingly split into two parts, this Ukrainian “post-glasnost film to end all post-glasnost films” (Derek Malcolm) may concern a possibly grieving widow or a possibly insane professor, but it’s the mood of impending collapse and seething madness that matters, not the narrative. “A movie that breaks all the rules when it comes to telling a story and clearly distinguishing between fiction and documentary, fantasy and reality, anger and detachment” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).
Kira Muratova
Kira Muratova is an Romanian/Jewish screenwriter and actress , known for her unusual directorial style. Muratova's films were heavily censored in the Soviet Union, yet she managed to emerge as one of the figures of contemporary Ukrainian and Russian cinema and was able to build a very successful film career from the 1960s. She received the People's Artist of Ukraine Award (1989); the Shevchenko National Award (1993) and the Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Award (2002). Muratova has spent much of her artistic career in Odessa, making most of her films at Odesa Film Studios. Her work has been described "one of the most distinctive and singular works of world filmmaking."
