Spirit of the Sixties
Despite their reputation for conformism and censorship, communist Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union produced their own vibrant counterculture during the 1960s. Matching their Western colleagues for rebelliousness and innovation, these directors transformed cinema behind the Iron Curtain. Our collection includes masterpieces from a number of “new wave” movements: Ukrainian Poetic Cinema, the Yugoslav Black Wave, and the Soviet Thaw.
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No Path Through Fire
Movie + 3 extras
Directed by Gleb Panfilov • 1967 • USSR/Russia
The debut feature from Gleb Panfilov, marking his first collaboration with his future wife and muse Inna Churikova, No Path Through Fire is a classic of sixties cinema. Set during the Russian Civil War and following the fate of military nurse Tanya,...
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The Plea
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Tengiz Abuladze • 1968 • USSR/Georgia
Based on the works of the Georgian poet Vazha-Pshavela, this influential classic follows a Christian soldier in the Caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century. When he refuses to cut off his enemy’s hand, he is ostracised by his fellow village...
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Feelings
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Algirdas Dausa and Almantas Grikevičius • 1968 • USSR/Lithuania
Banned by the Soviet authorities outside of Lithuania, this controversial classic blends the personal and the political against stunning coastal landscapes. 1944, on the Curonian Spit: one side of this Baltic lagoon is o...
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Three
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Aleksandar Petrović • 1965 • Yugoslavia
The first mature masterpiece from a figurehead of Yugoslav film, Three established Aleksandar Petrović at the forefront of the so-called Black Wave movement. Across a triptych of stories, we follow a soldier named Miloš (iconic actor Velimir “B...
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The Stone Cross
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Leonid Osyka • 1968 • USSR/Ukraine
Western Ukraine in the 1890s. When elderly peasant Ivan Didukh decides to leave his Carpathian home in search of a better life in Canada, the village comes together to ceremonially mark his departure, understood as symbolic of the death of their old...
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An Unusual Exhibition
Movie + 6 extras
Directed by Eldar Shengalaia • 1968 • USSR/Georgia
An Unusual Exhibition is a typically playful and melancholic work by one of Georgia’s best-loved directors. Charting the artistic frustration and romantic elation of Aguli, a down-on-his-luck sculptor forced to produce gravestones in order to su...
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The Kidnapping of the Sun and Moon
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1968 • Hungary
Inspired by Carpathian folklore and based on the epic poem by Ferenc Juhász, this mesmerising animated short by the great Sándor Reisenbüchler imagines a world destroyed and then rebuilt. A fearsome, seven-headed dragon swallows the sun and moon,...