Soviet Sixties: new waves and red rebellion
The sixties was the decade that revolutionised world cinema, as new waves flushed out old certainties in a rush of youthful energy and protest. Our latest collection celebrates the filmmaking that blossomed across the Soviet Union during that time: from radical documentary and rock musicals in the Baltics to Armenian satire and Russian romance.
In Latvia, Uldis Brauns reinvented Soviet non-fiction with his experimental collage 235,000,000 (1967), the peak of the “poetic documentary” movement. His compatriot Rolands Kalniņš bottled the youthful exuberance of rock music in his cult musical Four White Shirts (1967). In Estonia, Kaljo Kiisk’s controversial Madness (1969), a wartime parable about the insanity of authoritarianism, helped to inaugurate modern arthouse in the Baltics. 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. And in Russia, Andrei Konchalovsky courted controversy with his bleakly beautiful collective farm drama Asya’s Happiness (1966), while Marlen Khutsiev captured the angst and euphoria of the post-war generation in his timeless city symphony I Am Twenty (1965).
Subscribers can also enjoy a range of exclusive video essays and intros to the films and movements featured, as well as a portfolio of writing on the decade from the authors of the Klassiki Journal.
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235 000 000
Directed by Uldis Brauns • 1967 • USSR/Latvia
A landmark in the Baltic poetic documentary tradition, 235 000 000 is one of the most ambitious films of the Soviet 60s. Produced in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution – the title refers to the nominal population of the...
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235,000,000: an original video essay from Plan-Séquence
From Pedro Silva, the artist behind popular YouTube channel Plan-Séquence, this original video essay explores the method and the madness behind Uldis Brauns’ exquisite rendering of the diverse Soviet experience in 235,000,000.
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Four White Shirts
Directed by Rolands Kalniņš • 1967 • USSR/Latvia
The countercultural spirit of the sixties runs through this cult musical drama from Latvia, which thumbed its nose at the prevailing Soviet orthodoxy of the era and was rarely screened as a result. By day, Cēzars Kalniņš is a telephone repairman; ...
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Video Essay: Riding the Baltic New Wave with “Latvia’s Godard”
Often described as Latvia’s answer to Jean-Luc Godard, Rolands Kalniņš was a maverick filmmaker whose work redefined the limits of cinema under Soviet censorship. In this new video essay, we explore how Kalniņš carved out a defiantly creative path, focusing on his psychedelic rock musical Four Wh...
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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...
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Video Essay: The Shakespearean face of Soviet Sci-Fi
From Shakespeare to Solaris: Estonia’s Jüri Järvet burst onto the international scene in the 1970s with a series of performances of unusual intensity. From the title role in Grigorii Kozintsev’s daring vision of King Lear, to some of the biggest cult titles in Baltic film history, and Andrei Tark...
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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...
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An Armenian Masterpiece: watch an exclusive video essay from Plan-Séquence
From Pedro Silva, the artist behind popular YouTube channel Plan-Séquence, this exclusive video essay explores the relationship between landscape and people in Henrik Malyan’s classic soviet satire, We Are Our Mountains.
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I Am Twenty
Directed by Marlen Khutsiev • 1965 • USSR/Russia
Three lifelong friends see their aspirations juxtaposed against everyday life in 1960s Moscow, reflecting on their possible futures and their place in society. At the heart of the film is Sergei, returning from military service and grappling with ...
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Asya’s Happiness
Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky • 1966 • USSR/Russia
Collective farmer Asya is in love with the father of her unborn child. However, he does not reciprocate, leaving her forced to choose between a loveless marriage to another suitor and single motherhood. Konchalovsky’s sparsely beautiful tale o...
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Portfolio: read a selection of writing on the Soviet Sixties from our Journal
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Soviet Sixties: new waves and red rebellion
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