Soviet Satire: comedies of communism from silent cinema to the eighties
Our new collection of satire from across the USSR celebrates the unsung comedies of communism. These four films thumb their nose at authority, revealing the cracks in Soviet society and celebrating the power of the little man to break through the absurdities of modern life. Some were banned, some became cult favourites – but all of them show Soviet cinema in a surprisingly subversive light.
We begin in Georgia with Kote Mikaberidze’s head-spinning silent farce My Grandmother (1929), which skewers the Kafkaesque absurdity of the bureaucratic class via a dizzying range of avant-garde inventions. Henrik Malyan’s We Are Our Mountains (1969), often called Armenia’s greatest ever film, is an impish parable about the letter and spirit of the law set among a community of shepherds in the beautiful highlands of the Caucasus. Meanwhile in Estonia, Kaljo Kiisk’s controversial Madness (1969), a wartime parable about the insanity of authoritarianism, helped to inaugurate modern arthouse in the Baltics. And we return to Georgia for Eldar Shengelaia’s beloved cult classic Blue Mountains
-
My Grandmother
Directed by Kote Mikaberidze • 1929 • USSR/Georgia
This explosive, wildly inventive, and criminally under-seen gem from Kote Mikaberidze burst out of Georgia in 1929. An absurdist satire of bureaucracy, the film follows the hapless Georgiy and his struggle to overcome a cruel administrative syst...
-
We Are Our Mountains
Directed by Henrik Malyan • 1969 • USSR/Armenia
When a petty dispute over a lost sheep gets out of hand, a group of shepherds find their mountain idyll interrupted by the long arm of the law in Henrik Malyan’s cult Soviet satire, adapted from his own work by beloved Armenian author Hrant Matevos...
-
Madness
Directed by Kaljo Kiisk • 1969 • USSR/Estonia
Hailed as Estonia’s first truly modern feature film, Kaljo Kiisk’s mind-bending satire of authoritarianism and self-delusion pushed the boundaries of Soviet propriety and was banned from theatres for nearly twenty years. In an unnamed, occupied count...
-
Blue Mountains
Directed by Eldar Shengelaia • 1983 • USSR/Georgia
This deft satire of Soviet bureaucracy from one of Georgian cinema’s great poets follows Soso, an aspiring novelist looking to publish his latest manuscript. It soon becomes apparent that the publishing house is staffed by a host of oblivious em...
-
Soviet Satire: comedies of communism from silent cinema to the eighties
351 KB
