2008 Russian Resurrection Film Festival

I went to the Opening Night of this festival last night and saw the Academy Award nominated “12”, directed (and starring) Nikita Mihalkov.

The film is based on the old Henry Fonda classic “Twelve Angry Men” and is beautifully shot, features intense and brilliantly clever acting by the entire cast, and a multi-layered plot that keeps you “there” right to the very end.

If this is indicative of the quality of the other films being shown, then I will be going back for more.

The opening night itself was great, with brilliant vodka cocktails and shots(courtesy of sponsor Stolichnaya Vodka, Baltika beer (courtesy of Baltika Breweries) and food (courtesy of the Russian Ethnic Representative Council).

The only embarrassing moment for the night was that Manuka cinema couldn’t seem to get the projector to work properly for about the first 20 minutes of the film, though this resulted in nothing more than a bit of a laughter from the audience.

There would be no Australian ratings as the movies heven’t been released here yet. However, “12” was nominated this year for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and “Tulpan” won awards at Cannes this year.

Russia – I still haven’t been – would be good to visit the Motherland though.

Ratings – if you mean ratings a la “David and Margaret on the Movie Show” – I haven’t found any yet but I am sure Google would do the trick, but there are descriptions of each of the films if you click the link in my message posting and then click on the “Movies” tab.

If that link doesn’t work, then the address is: http://www.russianresurrection.com/2008/sessions.php?loc=canberra

I haven’t seen any of these films yet, but I think most of the films have won various international awards. If I can, I’d be keen to see “12”, “Tulpan”, “Graffiti” and maybe “Zero City” in the restrospective group of films. Definitely would be cool to take the kids to see “Alyosha Popovich”

Does it have ratings anywhere?

I was in Russia five years ago, and I’d love to go along to something. Maybe take some of the group I went with.

While I was there we were playing this game with a ring and I lost my ring. I was upset because it was given to me by a little orphan girl. The camp director told me that means that I will be coming back again. It hasn’t happened yet, but who knows.

It was pretty incredible. We went swimming in Lake Ladoga in our underwear at two in the morning with the sun setting and the moon full. Our interpreters were all young uni students and they just looked like water nymphs splashing around in the sunset / moonlight.

We drank lots of vodka … and danced!

It was really special.

But I can’t watch anything too scary ’cause I’m a big wuss.