The Klassiki Podcast

On Klassiki, we’re currently celebrating the work of the great Hungarian director István Szabó with restorations of two of his new wave classics, Father and The Concert. To go a little deeper on Szabó’s fascinating filmography, which stretches over six decades and has garnered awards from Cannes to the Oscars, this week Sam catches up with our friend Carmen Gray, a critic and programmer specialising in the cinema of eastern Europe and the Caucasus. 

Sam and Carmen explore Szabó’s lifelong project – chronicling the tragic twentieth-century history of Hungary and its Central European neighbours – with reference to his celebrated trilogy of historical dramas, Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985), and Hanussen (1988). They discuss their theatricality, deconstruction of identity and sexuality, and how they reflect Szabó’s own life experiences. 

Watch restorations of István Szabó’s sixties classics Father and The Concert on Klassiki now. 

You can also read our companion piece on his career over on the Journal and check out our pod episode on his 1980 melodrama Confidence with critic Alisa Goruleva here. 

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Estonian director Leida Laius was an unsung pioneer. Working from the sixties until the fall of communism, her films are striking for their empathetic exploration of the lives of women, from motherhood and marriage to sexuality. While she’s heralded in her homeland, like many female directors, her international reputation hasn’t kept pace with her talents – although there are welcome signs that this is changing, with a slew of new restorations and repertory screenings in recent years.

One such retrospective took place at the Spectacle Theater in New York earlier this year, programmed by critic and curator Kat Docalovich. This week, Sam is joined by Kat and Baltic cinema expert Josh Polanski to discuss the life and times of Leida Laius. 

You can watch restorations of Laius’s final two films, Smile at Last and A Stolen Meeting, on Klassiki now, and read more about her work over on our Journal. 

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Welcome listeners old and new to season eight of the Klassiki Podcast. We’ve got ten more episodes coming up for you to take us up to the festive season, with returning guests and new voices, covering the great and the good of Eastern European film. Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss an episode. 

Sergei Loznitsa remains one of the biggest draws in Eastern European cinema today. The Ukrainian filmmaker moves freely between fiction and both observational and archival documentaries in his efforts to excavate the dark depths of Russian and Soviet history. His latest feature, Imperium, premiered at Venice earlier this year and is now coming to the UK this month as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It’s perhaps Loznitsa’s most ambitious archival documentary yet. Using a treasure trove of newly uncovered footage captured in the early seventies by visiting Italian filmmakers, Loznitsa constructs a vast and partisan panorama of life under communist rule, from the Baltic Sea to the Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan. Ahead of its London bow, host Sam Goff spoke with the director about taking the pluge with this material, the history of Soviet documentary, and the enduring power of national cultures. 

The 70th BFI London Film Festival is taking place from 7-18 October. Find out more and stay tuned to the Klassiki Podcast and Journal for more coverage. You can get tickets for the screening of Imperium on Tuesday 13 October here. 

Get in touch: podcast@klassiki.online.

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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.

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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.

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