Lent is almost here, but first… MASLENITSA!!

Come get your blini and party on

with

the Russian International Association

and The Birch

Tuesday, March 1^st, 7-8 pm

Lerner Ramp Lounge East

Check out these videos!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtD40Lp18XU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PpN9Wq-Dt80#at=12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hyt_3LvAMIY#at=67

http://02varvara.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/maslenitsa-2010-it’s-still-goin’-on-strong/

Come See THIEVES BY LAW

The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University invites you

to take a revealing look at the mores, culture, and values of some of the most notorious Russian criminal figures and the very first new money in post-Soviet Russia obtained by murder, fraud, and brazen robbery artfully featured in

THIEVES BY LAW,

director Alexander Gentelev, 2010, Israel.

The favorite of the press at the last Tribeca International Film Festival, this feature documentary follows the personal stories of three Russian Mafiosi-cum-businessmen. They started with racket, robbery, and murder, they are now multi- millionaires. Their influence and connections go deep into Russian government and security apparatus. Some are awarded by the Russian Orthodox Patriarchy for their generosity, and newly found dedication to God. They are the face of Russian capitalism hiding behind the veneer of respectability. They desperately look for and often find legitimacy and acceptance both at home and abroad. They are proudly Russian patriots but their values, culture, mannerisms, and language are airily reminiscent of the new Ukrainian ruling class.

Hyperbole? Come and see for yourself.

When: Thursday, February 17, 2011, 7:30 PM.

Where: 717 Hamilton Hall, Columbia University.

The copy of the film was provided by its director Mr. Gentelev especially with the purpose of screening it by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University.

In Russian, English, and Hebrew with English voiceover/subtitles. Free and open to the public. Yuri Shevchuk will introduce the film and hold a traditional post-screening discussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eixjRLlvtk

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2010/04/tribeca-film-festival-2010-thieves-by-law-alexander-gentelev/

http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/87139752.html

Wild East: The Best of Soviet Action Films (Yes, please!)

The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents:

Wild East: The Best of Soviet Action Films

February 11-17

"Unlike the Red Westerns of the American Wild West, Soviet Easterns usually took place on the eastern steppes of the USSR, especially during the Russian Revolution or following the Civil War. Many of the Easterns use similar methods as the American Western to dramatize the Civil War in Central Asia in the 1920s and 30s, when the Red Army fought against Islamic Turkic basmachi rebels. The mountains of Kopetdag can be seen as an equivalent to Monument Valley and Sir Darya River as the Rio Grande. Add the gun-slinging ethos, horse-riding pioneers of a sort (though often ideological in this case), the bounty hunter traversing difficult terrain with outlaw in tow, and railroading and taming the wild frontier, and you have a generic mirror image of the American genre. Intriguingly, one possible influence on these Soviet filmmakers may have been the screenings of Serge Leone’s For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly at the Moscow international film festival in 1969.

Seagull Films presents in collaboration with Mosfilm and Mardjani Foundation. Curated by Alla Verlotsky and Sergey Lavrentyev. Special thanks to Karen Shakhnazarov and Richard Pena."

http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/wildeast.html

This One, Too!

This Song Will Stay with You Always

"Slavei" from Wesleyan (We Like!)

Check out some Czech at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Fantastic World of František Vláčil

February 2-10

"We are pleased to present this major survey of Vláčil’s work - “The Czech New Wave's formalist, post-expressionist wrecking ball” (Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice). With in-person appearances by actor Jan Kacer (Valley of the Bees) and critic Peter Hames (author of The Czechoslovak New Wave).

The least-known major figure of the 1960s Czech New Wave, František Vláčil studied aesthetics and art history before embarking on a film career marked by its recurring theme of conformity at odds with free expression, its use of the past as a prism for understanding the present and, above all, for its dazzling visual poetry. Although duly celebrated for his 13th-century epic Marketa Lazarová—voted the greatest Czech film of all time in a 1998 poll of national critics—Vláčil made over a dozen additional features that run the gamut from lyrical children’s fables to incisive critiques of Czech politics and social mores in the aftermath of the Second World War. Accused of subversion and unable to work following the Soviet invasion of 1968, Vláčil returned to filmmaking in the late 1970s and remained active until his death in 1999. His full body of work, only now being discovered internationally, reveals the sure hand of a master.

Acknowledgments: National Film Archive, Prague; Bionaut Films; British Film Institute/Geoff Andrew and Julie Pearce, Czech Centre London/Renata Clark, Czech Center New York/Pavla Niklova and Radka Krizek, Peter Hames, Jan Kacer, Irena Kovarova."

For more information, visit: http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/vlacil.html or

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703439504576116051342689400.html?mod=WSJ_NY_Culture_MIDDLE_LSMini