Remembering Chekhov

Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call...

Epic film about WWII, a sequel to Utomlyonnye solntsem (1994). Evil Stalin is terrorizing people of Russia while the Nazis are advancing. Russian officer Kotov, who miraculously survived the death sentence in Stalin's Purge, is now fighting in the front-lines. His daughter, Nadia, who survived a rape attempt by Nazi soldiers, is now a nurse risking her own life to save others. In the war-torn nation even former enemies are fighting together to defend their land. People stand up united for the sake of victory. Written by Steve Shelokhonov

St. Petersburg, mid 19th century: the indolent, middle-aged Oblomov lives in a flat with his older servant, Zakhar. He sleeps much of the day, dreaming of his childhood on his parents' estate. His boyhood companion, Stoltz, now an energetic and successful businessman, adds Oblomov to his circle whenever he's in the city, and Oblomov's life changes when Stoltz introduces him to Olga, lovely and cultured. When Stoltz leaves for several months, Oblomov takes a country house near Olga's, and she determines to change him: to turn him into a man of society, action, and culture. Soon, Olga and Oblomov are in love; but where, in the triangle, does that leave Stoltz?

Based on the play of the same name by Aleksandr Volodin "Five Evenings". The end of the 1950s. Aleksandr Petrovich Ilyin travels to the city where he lived before the war. Visiting the telephone operator Zoya, he sees a familiar house through the window and decides to go there for only fifteen minutes. So Aleksandr gets into a communal apartment, where the love of his youth Tamara Vasilyevna lives. They met twenty years ago and fell in love, but the war separated them. Now Ilyin and Tamara Vasilyevna met again, and love broke out with renewed vigor...

Phone conversation between an abandoned husband and his friend.

This dialogue-free short film, Devochka I Veshchi (A Girl and Things), was one of Mikhalkov’s first student films, made under the tutelage of Mikhail Romm, himself a legendary filmmaker. It is a modernist (and very Soviet) look at a young girl’s interaction with the world around her and displays many of the strengths of the director’s later work, including his attention to milieu and his sensitivity to young performers. -http://www.vulture.com/2009/07/in_soviet_russia_nikita_mikhal.html

Incredible adventures of an Italian test auto-racer in the exotic and so unpredictable Russia! Originally, this film was made as a commercial for the Fiat Automobile Company, but the abundance of the shot material proved enough for editing a full-length feature.

Director Nikita Mikhalkov documents the history of Russia from 1980 to 1991 by annually asking his daughter Anna such questions as "What do you love the most?", "What scares you the most?", "What do you want above anything" and "What do you hate the most?"

Part II of a compilation movie featuring European T.V. commercials directed by a variety of well-known directors from across Europe and the U.S. Compiled and produced by Jean-Marie Boursicot.

Olga Voznesenskaya is a silent screen star whose pictures are so popular that underground revolutionaries risk capture to see them. She's in southern Russia filming a tear-jerker as the Bolsheviks get closer to Moscow. Although married, she spends time every day with Victor Pototsky, the film's cameraman. Gradually, it comes to light that Victor uses his job as a cover for filming White atrocities and Red heroism: he's a Bolshevik. He asks her for help, and she discovers meaning in her otherwise flighty and self-centred life. Love blooms. Will the Red forces arrive in time to save them from a suspicious White military leader? Will she find courage?