15TH MAY 2025
RECORD 25
TRIPLE L: LOW-KEY LOVE LETTER
Ever since I watched Walking the Streets of Moscow (1963), I pictured the city could be just like that. Sunny, warm, airy, young and full of hope. This is what spring does to you anyways. While the air is stuffed with pollen and fluff from the trees, the city camouflages into different colours every week while having all the lilacs, cherries and tulips blooming. People still rush to catch busy Metro's trains to get to work and schools like in Georgiy Daneliya's film and there are still group of friends traveling across and along many of Moscow Rings (Garden, Third and Boulevard Rings) being driven by and giving back to the city.
Three young friends catching breath between the work days on their weekends and compromising with the less idealistic adult world while flirting, dancing, going places and enjoying the rain, sun and warm nights. This feeling is universal across all cities, cultures and countries, tracing how youth is slipping into the illusive time of life. Letting us, the audience, only savour frames and time while the film is running. It is infectious to start seeing the city that you might be watching those films in the way the characters do. Same goes with Dinara Asanova's feature debut Woodpeckers Don't Get Headaches (1974) unveiling the backbones and rail crossroads of Leningrad for its youngsters entering the youth.
This film had a non-linear history. Being written by Yuri Klepikov, it had been on the shelf of Lenfilm (a now-St. Petersburg-based film studio) due to the lack of demand for teenage films but also because of the peculiarity of the story. While freshly moved to the Northern capital of the Soviet Union an emerging film director Dinara Asanova was looking for a studio job, running away from the scandal that happened in Moscow with her debut short Rudolfio (1968), things were just to work out for this project. Asanova was given to read the script by the studio's editor Frijeta Gukasian who was previously stunned with Rudolfio (1968), and the next day Asanova was excited and firm as she claimed it was just the film she wanted to work on.
It's the verge of summer in Leningrad and a group of friends are inbetween their commitments, school classes and summer camps, stuck between some work practice and total freedom of the former Imperial capital, which is impossible to trace. There is no gold domes or monumental sculptures. Only quiet, old, and mysterious yards and staircases that have been there before and seem to be staying for longer after. There is an endless number of rail tracks, trains, almost entrapping kids with the inevitability of the road and the necessity for the move. This time gap lets three friends Seva, Ira and Leva to have the world on their terms, with no detentions from the principal, plenty of band practice, long walks home with occasional reminders of the adult reality by being constantly told off for everything. When the only mistake they seem to make is not rushing to live. Something that the film director herself was very anxious about with having a heart attack at a young age and eventually passing away in her early 40s. For the kids, the summer time that appears as a momentum and lets them stay in it for a while, has disappeared as fast as the departing train to Murmansk that parted Seva and Ira probably forever.
Leningrad Cinema School, as nicknamed by the critics, was a group of filmmakers who worked on Lenfilm around the 1970s and 1980s and as much as they weren't united visually and stylistically, they treasured ethical and moral dilemmas appealing to humanistic conscience. Which appears as a reflection of the Soviet heritage of the 1930s and the creative innovation brought by the 1960s Thaw in the country. The last brought to the world the most famous names and cultural influence that affects Russian-speaking culture to this day. These films are never defined with just one genre or story, combining and existing in the grey area of the in-between. Documentary, fiction, essay and experimental filmmaking, whether it's July Rain (1967), Goodbye, Boys (1964) or Following the Sun (1961). Approaches that were brought and shared with the foreign filmmakers of the generation but which reflected specifically local moods and the challenging heritage of the first half of the XX century.
Asanova let a musician Vladimir Vasilkov have at least 3-4 minutes to improvise and included that in the final cut of the 75 minutes in total. As with any other rehearsals of the jazz band in the film that Seva 'Fly' Mukhin sneaks into and eventually the rehearsals of Seva’s own band, alongside his attic practice while we watch him warm up and emotionally connect with his passion for music. Asanova and the cinematographer Dmitriy Dolinin let us see Leningrad sunny, gloomy and freshly after the rain, having a city stranger roller blading just along the carriageway and mumbling some tune. Woodpeckers Don't Get Headache (1974) was named a lover letter to a childhood for a reason, with having the aether qualities seeing things post-factum in their lighter viewpoint. Yet, to me, the film reveals itself as a love letter to the memories of Leningrad that exist between house yards, public spaces and friendly connections that build these experiences, the intentions of which are confirmed by Dolinin, the Leningrad native, who wanted to share the city behind the tourist facade. Impossible to forget and impossible not to fall in love with.
Suggested watching:
WALKING THE STREETS OF MOSCOW (1963) DIR. BY GEORGIY DANELIYA
WOODPECKERS DON’T GET HEADACHES (1974) DIR. BY DINARA ASANOVA
JULY RAIN (1967) DIR. BY MARLEN KHUTSIEV
GOODBYE, BOYS (1964) DIR. BY MIKHAIL KALIK
OTHER PEOPLE’S LETTERS (1976) DIR. BY ILYA AVERBAKH
FOLLOWING THE SUN (1961) DIR. BY MIKHAIL KALIK
I AM TWENTY (1964) DIR. BY MARLEN KHUTSIEV
PEARLS OF THE DEEP (1966)
DON’T CRY, PRETTY GIRLS! (1970) DIR. BY MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS
WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2021) DIR. BY JOACQIM TRIER
RYE LANE (2023) DIR. BY RAINE ALLEN-MILLER
BURNING (2018) DIR. BY LEE CHANG-DONG
PITER FM (2006) DIR. BY OKSANA BYCHKOVA
PLAYTIME (1967) DIR. BY JACQUES TATI
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY (1991) DIR. BY GARRY MARSHALL
DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) DIR. BY SPIKE LEE
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001) DIR. BY WES ANDERSON
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) DIR. BY NOAH BAUMBACH
ALMA’S RAINBOW (1994) DIR. BY AYOKA CHENZIRA
ROCKS (2020) DIR. BY SARAH GAVRON
THE TUNER (2004) DIR. BY KIRA MURATOVA
RAG UNION (2015) DIR. BY MIKHAIL MESTETSKY
RECORD 25
TRIPLE L: LOW-KEY LOVE LETTER
Ever since I watched Walking the Streets of Moscow (1963), I pictured the city could be just like that. Sunny, warm, airy, young and full of hope. This is what spring does to you anyways. While the air is stuffed with pollen and fluff from the trees, the city camouflages into different colours every week while having all the lilacs, cherries and tulips blooming. People still rush to catch busy Metro's trains to get to work and schools like in Georgiy Daneliya's film and there are still group of friends traveling across and along many of Moscow Rings (Garden, Third and Boulevard Rings) being driven by and giving back to the city.
Three young friends catching breath between the work days on their weekends and compromising with the less idealistic adult world while flirting, dancing, going places and enjoying the rain, sun and warm nights. This feeling is universal across all cities, cultures and countries, tracing how youth is slipping into the illusive time of life. Letting us, the audience, only savour frames and time while the film is running. It is infectious to start seeing the city that you might be watching those films in the way the characters do. Same goes with Dinara Asanova's feature debut Woodpeckers Don't Get Headaches (1974) unveiling the backbones and rail crossroads of Leningrad for its youngsters entering the youth.
This film had a non-linear history. Being written by Yuri Klepikov, it had been on the shelf of Lenfilm (a now-St. Petersburg-based film studio) due to the lack of demand for teenage films but also because of the peculiarity of the story. While freshly moved to the Northern capital of the Soviet Union an emerging film director Dinara Asanova was looking for a studio job, running away from the scandal that happened in Moscow with her debut short Rudolfio (1968), things were just to work out for this project. Asanova was given to read the script by the studio's editor Frijeta Gukasian who was previously stunned with Rudolfio (1968), and the next day Asanova was excited and firm as she claimed it was just the film she wanted to work on.
It's the verge of summer in Leningrad and a group of friends are inbetween their commitments, school classes and summer camps, stuck between some work practice and total freedom of the former Imperial capital, which is impossible to trace. There is no gold domes or monumental sculptures. Only quiet, old, and mysterious yards and staircases that have been there before and seem to be staying for longer after. There is an endless number of rail tracks, trains, almost entrapping kids with the inevitability of the road and the necessity for the move. This time gap lets three friends Seva, Ira and Leva to have the world on their terms, with no detentions from the principal, plenty of band practice, long walks home with occasional reminders of the adult reality by being constantly told off for everything. When the only mistake they seem to make is not rushing to live. Something that the film director herself was very anxious about with having a heart attack at a young age and eventually passing away in her early 40s. For the kids, the summer time that appears as a momentum and lets them stay in it for a while, has disappeared as fast as the departing train to Murmansk that parted Seva and Ira probably forever.
Leningrad Cinema School, as nicknamed by the critics, was a group of filmmakers who worked on Lenfilm around the 1970s and 1980s and as much as they weren't united visually and stylistically, they treasured ethical and moral dilemmas appealing to humanistic conscience. Which appears as a reflection of the Soviet heritage of the 1930s and the creative innovation brought by the 1960s Thaw in the country. The last brought to the world the most famous names and cultural influence that affects Russian-speaking culture to this day. These films are never defined with just one genre or story, combining and existing in the grey area of the in-between. Documentary, fiction, essay and experimental filmmaking, whether it's July Rain (1967), Goodbye, Boys (1964) or Following the Sun (1961). Approaches that were brought and shared with the foreign filmmakers of the generation but which reflected specifically local moods and the challenging heritage of the first half of the XX century.
Asanova let a musician Vladimir Vasilkov have at least 3-4 minutes to improvise and included that in the final cut of the 75 minutes in total. As with any other rehearsals of the jazz band in the film that Seva 'Fly' Mukhin sneaks into and eventually the rehearsals of Seva’s own band, alongside his attic practice while we watch him warm up and emotionally connect with his passion for music. Asanova and the cinematographer Dmitriy Dolinin let us see Leningrad sunny, gloomy and freshly after the rain, having a city stranger roller blading just along the carriageway and mumbling some tune. Woodpeckers Don't Get Headache (1974) was named a lover letter to a childhood for a reason, with having the aether qualities seeing things post-factum in their lighter viewpoint. Yet, to me, the film reveals itself as a love letter to the memories of Leningrad that exist between house yards, public spaces and friendly connections that build these experiences, the intentions of which are confirmed by Dolinin, the Leningrad native, who wanted to share the city behind the tourist facade. Impossible to forget and impossible not to fall in love with.
Suggested watching:
WALKING THE STREETS OF MOSCOW (1963) DIR. BY GEORGIY DANELIYA
WOODPECKERS DON’T GET HEADACHES (1974) DIR. BY DINARA ASANOVA
JULY RAIN (1967) DIR. BY MARLEN KHUTSIEV
GOODBYE, BOYS (1964) DIR. BY MIKHAIL KALIK
OTHER PEOPLE’S LETTERS (1976) DIR. BY ILYA AVERBAKH
FOLLOWING THE SUN (1961) DIR. BY MIKHAIL KALIK
I AM TWENTY (1964) DIR. BY MARLEN KHUTSIEV
PEARLS OF THE DEEP (1966)
DON’T CRY, PRETTY GIRLS! (1970) DIR. BY MÁRTA MÉSZÁROS
WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2021) DIR. BY JOACQIM TRIER
RYE LANE (2023) DIR. BY RAINE ALLEN-MILLER
BURNING (2018) DIR. BY LEE CHANG-DONG
PITER FM (2006) DIR. BY OKSANA BYCHKOVA
PLAYTIME (1967) DIR. BY JACQUES TATI
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY (1991) DIR. BY GARRY MARSHALL
DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) DIR. BY SPIKE LEE
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001) DIR. BY WES ANDERSON
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005) DIR. BY NOAH BAUMBACH
ALMA’S RAINBOW (1994) DIR. BY AYOKA CHENZIRA
ROCKS (2020) DIR. BY SARAH GAVRON
THE TUNER (2004) DIR. BY KIRA MURATOVA
RAG UNION (2015) DIR. BY MIKHAIL MESTETSKY
Thank you for reading!
Yours,
5TO9 FC TEAM