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RUSSIA

House of Fools- Andrei Konchalovsky
Based on a true story, House of Fools unfolds in a mental hospital located on the border of the North Caucasian republics of Chechnya and Ingushetia. Russia is at war with Chechnya and the military machine is rolling in the direction of an asylum housing a multicultural microcosm of psychiatric patients. As the bombs start to fall, the nurses flee, leaving the lunatics to the mercy of fate. But as chance would have it, the soldiers who turn up at the asylum turn out to be a polite bunch of Chechen irregulars. They sing beautiful folk songs, accompanied by accordion-playing inmate Jana. Jana, who is obsessed with Canadian pop star Bryan Adams, falls for a flirtatious soldier and believes that he will marry her. When Russian troops finally bring real war to the asylum, all Janna can do is play her accordion and pray for peace to return. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or King of Hearts, House of Fools raises the question of whether true madness lies within or outside the asylum walls. This year's Russian submission for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. (104 mins.) Print courtesy of Paramount Classics.
Selected Filmography: Uncle Vanya (70), Siberiade (79), Shy People (88), The Inner Circle (91), Lumière and Company (95).
Showtimes: 2/21, 7pm WH and 2/22, 3:15pm GU.

The Lover- Valery Todorovsky
"Watch over your wife while she's alive, but especially after she's dead," states the main character in this moving work about mourning and memory. Mitya, a university lecturer, finds his musician wife dead from a sudden heart attack. Overcome by grief, he then discovers a letter she had written to the lover with whom she had been having an affair for the past 15 years. Jealousy combines with grief as Mitya searches the lover out in a quest that threatens his sanity and destroys the chance of him building a new life with his teenage son. Focusing on the relationship between Mitya and the lover, Ivan, and the ways in which they have been defined by their parallel, interdependent relationships, Todorovsky fashions a work that is at once literary in its focus on the characters internal lives, but full of visual flair as it conveys a brooding world of uncontrollable obsession. (96 mins.) Print courtesy of Intercinema Agency.
Selected Filmography: Catafalque (90), Love (91), Moscow Nights (94), The Land of the Deaf (97).
Showtimes: 2/15, 9pm BW and 2/16, 7:30pm GU.

Russian Ark- Alexander Sokurov
Russian Ark is both a dazzling technical tour-de-force and a love letter to Russian culture. Unfolding in real time in a single, dreamlike uncut digital video take, it tracks a contemporary filmmaker (Sokurov) and a mercurial 19th-century French diplomat, the Marquis De Custine-our tour guides on a phantasmagorical, time-traveling journey through St. Petersburg's opulent Hermitage Museum. Swirling through the galleries of time we encounter its first resident, Catherine the Great, the family of Czar Nicholas II, current Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky and regular Russian art lovers. Requiring seven months of rehearsal, 1,000 costumed actors, the equivalent of 33 soundstages and a live orchestra performance, the exhilarating final film was shot in just the amount of time it takes to watch it. But beyond the seamless logistical achievement-Russian Ark creates a moving testimony to human resiliency and the survival of culture. Sampling history and some of the world's most exquisite art and artifacts, it is, like the Hermitage itself, a veritable Russian Ark. (96 mins.) Print courtesy of Wellspring.
Filmography: Save and Protect (89), The Second Circle (90), Stone (92), Whispering Pages (93), Mother and Son (96), Moloch (99).
Showtime: 2/23, 7:30pm WH.

The War- Alexei Balabanov
"Set in Chechnya, Russia, and England, Alexei Balabanov's film is essentially an adventure story-even, it has been suggested, a Western. Two English actors, John (Ian Kelly) and Margaret (Ingaborga Dapkunaite), are among a group of captives held by the guerrilla leader, Aslan Gugaev. Gugaev demands a ransom for Margaret's release and John is allowed back to England to raise the money. During the captivity, John meets a Russian computer operator, Ivan (Alexei Chadov), who is also released by Gugaev, and later seeks out his help for the return journey through Chechnya. Very much a Russian view of the conflict, told from Ivan's perspective, the film is involving in both its action and narrative. At the same time, it also touches on the attitudes of government, the social realities of Putin's Russia, the clan rivalries of the Chechen fighters, and the cruelties of fate. The nature and brutalisation of war is made apparent as the action develops, where no individual or faction can afford to trust the word of the other. In Ivan's key words, 'War is blood. To survive you must kill.' The film concludes with a blackly ironic verdict on human and political motivation."-Peter Hames. (120 mins.) Print courtesy of Intercinema Agency.
Filmography: Happy Days (91), The Castle (94), Brother (97), Of Freaks and Men (98), Brother 2 (00).
Showtimes: 2/18, 9:15pm and 2/20, 6pm BW.

PHOTO- RUSSIAN ARK