Screening 35mm & 16mm film prints from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.
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The Cranes Are Flying
Wednesday, May 31 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the doorTHE CRANES ARE FLYING
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov • 1957
In Russian with English subtitles
After lying low as a Soviet film bureaucrat for over two decades, visionary Georgian director Mikhail Kalatozov burst back onto the big screen with The Cranes Are Flying. Taking advantage of the comparatively open culture climate of Nikita Khrushchev’s post-Stalin “thaw,” Kalatozov and his cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky threw everything they had at this wartime love story, letting loose with all the camera tricks and far-out ideas that they had stashed away during the prior regime for fear of being pilloried as formalists. There’s no real reason that the camera has to sprint up the spiral staircase of a Moscow apartment complex to announce the ecstatic union of Veronika (Tatyana Samojlova) and Boris (Aleksei Batalov)—but neither is there a reason it shouldn’t. Soon enough Boris is off fighting in World War II, Veronika is hunkering down with his family, and being reluctantly drawn into an affair with his cousin Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin). The Cranes Are Flying announced the return of a national cinema that had been lying dormant for decades while Anglophone film societies made do with ancient 16mm prints of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Pudovkin’s Mother. (Around the same time, the new Soviet guard demonstrated its liberal tendency by releasing the second part of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible thirteen years after its completion.) Kalatozov won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and Cranes wound up distributed in the US by Warner Bros. (!) as part of a State Department-sponsored cultural exchange. (The USSR got Marty, its first American film since World War II, in the bargain, learning the travails of a bachelor butcher under capitalism.) Cranes received near-unanimous critical praise in the US and became an art house darling. (KW)
97 min • Mosfilm • 35mm from Janus Films
Preceded by: 1957 trailer reel – ~10 min – 35mm from Chicago Film Society CollectionsNEXT UP: How Green Was My Valley on Wednesday, June 7 at NEIU
Upcoming screenings:
View all upcoming screenings & venue info →
Wed 5/24 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Man’s Castle
Wed 5/31 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
The Cranes are Flying
Wed 6/7 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
How Green Was My Valley
Mon 6/12 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
Wild Things • Advance Tickets
Wed 6/14 at 8:30 PM @ Comfort Station
The Films of Maya Deren
Mon 6/19 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
Pour Don Carlos • Advance Tickets
Wed 6/28 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Red River
Wed 7/5 at 7:30 @ NEIU
Ugetsu
Mon 7/10 at 6:30 PM @ Music Box
The Turin Horse
Wed 7/19 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Monsieur Verdoux
Wed 7/26 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
The Quince Tree Sun
Wed 8/9 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Losing Ground
Wed 8/23 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
Titanic

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