The citizens of Madrid (Spain) and Budapest (Hungary) are spending the month of October indulging in the classics of the Russian cinema. The Spanish screenings are a part of the cross-cultural year between Russia and Spain that is celebrated throughout 2011.

      The Cine Dore movie theatre in Madrid offered to its visitors such gems of Russian and Soviet cinema, as Circus by Grigory Alexandrov (1936), Unsent Letter by Mikhail Kalatozov (1960), Agony by Elem Klimov (1981), The Vanished Empire by Karen Shakhnazarov (2008), and other. The screenings end on October 31, 2011.

      The Budapest Cinema Museum has co-organised, together with Mosfilm, the Week of Russian Cinema, from 14 to 21 October. The visitors watched Ivan the Terrible by Sergei Eisenstein (1944), Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky (1966), and other films.

      The most poignant was the screening of the 'Soviet' and 'Hungarian' versions of the 1967 co-production, The Red and the White (dir. Miklos Jansco). Jansco's best-known black-and-white feature was commission by the Soviet government to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. However, Jansco significantly deviated from the "brief" that led to re-editing and then its ban in the USSR. The film was released in the West and was acclaimed for its technical aspects and use of Cinemascope, as well as for its portrayal of brutality and senselessness of war. 

      Source: Mosfilm. Image courtesy: Mosfilm.

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