Archive · The East · Cinema · People

Sergei Parajanov and Yuri Mgoyan in Tbilisi in 1988

Parajanov met Mgoyan in Tbilisi. The young man had no connection with cinema whatever, but the director saw in him the hero of Lermontov's oriental tale, all the more so as he expected no psychological game, wanting instead to see plastic expressiveness and the ability to be a

Black-and-white photograph of three women in dark veils seated before a painted wall, the central one holding a dagger and a bowl.

Archive · The East · Cinema

Three veiled women in a photograph by Elena Karusaar, 1988

Scenes from Sergei Parajanov's film Ashik Kerib. Photographs by Elena Karusaar, 1988

Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Reportage

The state of the auditorium at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where yesterday's Oscars ceremony was held

The rows in the balcony are buried in rubbish. These seats are reserved for studio staff, invited guests, partners, film students and the junior crew members of the nominated films. Culture, as they say, with a capital C (for Crisp packet)

Archive · Cinema · Books · Heritage

In 2013 the Library of Congress published a report with the eloquent title “The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929”, from which it follows that we have lost for ever 75% of the creative legacy of the era that raised…

Between 1912 and 1929 some 11,000 silent feature films were released in the United States. Only a small part of them has survived to the present day. The chief cause of the losses was deliberate destruction. Before home cinema and television, films were considered useless once their run was

Coming Up · Art · Cinema

Iceland's Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale to Present "Pocket Universe" by Artist, Poet and Film Director Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir

Iceland's Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale will present "Pocket Universe", a multidisciplinary project by the artist, poet and film director Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir. At the centre of the exhibition is a video work about a being called Creature Zero, who sets off in search of

Archive · Cinema · Moscow · People · Pop Culture

Robert De Niro's visits to Moscow from 1982 to 2015 and Kozakov's recollections

Robert De Niro first visited Moscow in February 1982, on the eve of filming Emil Loteanu's "Anna Pavlova", in a cameo as the ballerina's impresario Solomon Yurok. The participation of a Hollywood star might have secured the film a release in the United States,

NB! · Cinema · Books

Actor Alexander Mizev shares behind-the-scenes photographs from the set of the series based on The Captain's Daughter, directed by Dmitry Litvinenko

NB! · Cinema · Moscow · People · Pop Culture

Robert De Niro in Moscow

Art · Cinema · Observations · Humour

Modigliani in the dining room of the collectors Wendell and Dorothy Cherry in Louisville, and Modigliani in the drawing room of Lyudmila Prokofyevna Kalugina's flat in "Office Romance"

The Cherrys have the 1919 canvas "Jeanne Hébuterne Seated in Front of a Door"; Lyudmila Prokofyevna has "Girl in a Sailor Suit" of 1918. To be honest, our Modigliani looks even better, without any candelabra or gilding, simply and in a thoroughly modernist spirit

Cinema · Observations · Humour

My grandfather Vilém was a hypnotist, and the whole town saw in his vocation a wish to do nothing at all

Trainee dispatcher Miloš Hrma. The 1966 Czechoslovak film by Jiří Menzel, "Closely Observed Trains"

Interviews · Cinema · People

Jiří Menzel in a 2013 interview on censorship and freedom in cinema

Czech director Jiří Menzel (1938-2020) on censorship:. - In one of your interviews you said that cinema always faces some form of censorship. Yet it seems that in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s this apparatus gave artists a different "impulse" from the one the state or the system gives

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