The Klassiki Podcast

That’s a wrap on season seven of the podcast. As always, thank you for listening along. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss us when we return for season eight in the autumn. And please, leave us a five-star rating and share the show far and wide so we can continue to grow. Thank you. 

The 79th edition of the Locarno Film Festival has just come to a close. Every year, this resort town on the shores of Lake Maggiore hosts to one of the world’s most rewarding festivals, balancing arthouse favourites with a ready supply of lesser-known talent. Friend of the show Sona Karapoghosyan – critic and programmer for Armenia’s Golden Apricot Film Festival – has been back in Locarno this year, serving as a member of the FIPRESCI Jury for the international competition. Sam caught up with her before the award winners were announced to chat about some East European and Caucasian titles from the programme – including what turned out to be the top prize winner, with the Golden Leopard going to Romanian stalwart Florin Șerban’s You Don’t Belong Here. Also up for discussion are I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, Isabelle Stever’s transgender romance from wartime Ukraine, and Demons, Natalka Vorozhbyt’s darkly supernatural Russia-Ukraine allegory.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

The forest is one of the prevailing symbols of Russia and its former imperial holdings: from the Baltic to the taiga to the Pacific. But how has the forest informed Russia’s sense of itself and its place in the world? This is the question at the heart of Sophie Pinkham’s new book, The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires: a cultural and environmental history about the role of the forest in making and resisting the Russian and Soviet states, stretching from the Bronze Age to the war on Ukraine. 

This week, Sam invites Sophie onto the pod to discuss the forest on film. How have filmmakers related to the Russian forest and what do their films tell us about Russian and Soviet colonialism and environmentalism? Sam and Sophie explore all this, as well as pagans, geologists, and partisans, with reference to cinematic classics including Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, and Larisa Shepitko. 

Make sure to check out Sophie Pinkham’s book The Oak and The Larch: A Forest History of Russia and its Empires.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Among his many achievements, the Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins is perhaps best known for his sprawling documentaries charting the history of cinema: The Story of Film: An Odyssey, originally released in 2011, and Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, from 2019. Now, Mark is back with a third entry in this pantheon: The Story of Documentary Film. Like its predecessors, it's an epic undertaking, with 16 hour-long chapters running from the 19th century to the present day and ranging all across the globe, examining the political, social, and aesthetic factors that have shaped documentary, with examples ranging from the canonical to the deliciously obscure. 

This week, host Sam Goff sits down with Mark for a fittingly wide-ranging conversation about how he approaches these long-form odysseys, his personal experiences in Eastern Europe, from visiting Moscow during perestroika to watching films in bomb shelters in Sarajevo, and some of his favourite filmmakers from the region.

Explore Klassiki’s collection of documentary titles here.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Long time listeners of the show will be familiar with the film historian Ian Christie, who’s joined us to discuss topics ranging from Aleksandr Sokurov to Powell and Pressburger, the Soviet avant-garde to The Saragossa Manuscript. His new book, The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema, collects writings and interviews from decades of pioneering work on subjects ranging from the silent era to contemporary figures like Andrei Zvyagintsev. 

Ian spent the final years of the Soviet era travelling back and forth to the USSR, witnessing the social and cultural revolution that was unfolding and befriending many of the leading figures in the film industry. This week, host Sam Goff invites Ian back on the pod to reflect on those experiences and to share his memories of encounters with artists like Andrei Tarkovsky, Kira Muratova, Elem Klimov, and many more. 

The Most Important Art: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Russian and Soviet Cinema is on sale now from Sticking Place Books. 

Klassiki subscribers can explore a special watchlist featuring many of the films that Ian discusses on this episode here.

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Renowned in his native Georgia as one of the nation’s greatest filmmakers, Otar Iosseliani spent the majority of his career in his adoptive home of France after emigrating in the early eighties. The news that Cinema Guild will be releasing a slate of restorations has occasioned an extensive retrospective in New York, where audiences can acquaint themselves with the director’s bustling long takes, mordant satire, and anarchic sympathy for the drunks, losers, and misfits of both Soviet communism and western capitalism. Otar Iosseliani: Fables of Modern Life opens this week at Asia Society before heading over to Metrograph, and we’re delighted to say that Klassiki will be co-presenting the programme at both venues. 

This week, host Sam Goff speaks with Edo Choi, Film Programmer at Metrogaph, and Inney Prakash, Curator of Film at Asia Society, about the retrospective and Iosseliani’s unique cinematic sensibility, which bears comparison with directors from Jacques Tati to Jean-Luc Godard, and even the Safdie Brothers. 

Fables of Modern Life kicks off at Asia Society on 24 and 25 July, then continues at Metrograph from the 8 to the 23 August.

Klassiki subscribers can watch a double bill of Iosseliani titles on the site from this Thursday 23: his debut feature Falling Leaves, and the French farce Farewell, Home Sweet Home. 

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.