Lev Dodin

For its creators, this film became, in a sense, a labor of love and duty. *Yuri Butusov: Drums Within* is a film about the director’s talent, his confrontation with reality, his mission, and love. Those featured in the film—Butusov’s students, actors who worked with him, his former classmates, close associates, and his "gang"—were unanimous: knowing and working with him was never, and could never have been, just another project. He changed the people he met and transformed the space around him; he would stir things up and create a swell of energy—making the whole cauldron boil. Yet, often enough, he himself found himself powerless against that very tide. Making a film about such a man—avoiding the trap of turning him into a monument and ensuring the result was anything but banal—was a formidable challenge for the filmmakers. They worked on the project for over a year, gathering a wealth of rare archival material and interviewing dozens of people.

A television play based on stories by Alexander Grin. Five sailing ships are blocked in the port of Lissa by an enemy privateer. The captains of four of these ships gather around a hotel table, pondering how to set sail and outsmart the privateer's vigilance...

A story about Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski, a twentieth-century theatre genius. Owing to his powerful extraordinary talent he managed to stay a true artist and a free spirit within the harsh Soviet system. In the film contemporary theater and film directors (Kirill Serebrennikov, Katie Mitchell, Lev Dodin and others) show how Stanislavski's method affects their everyday work. Each of the directors finds his or her own reflection in the mirror of his genius. In search of an answer to the question whether modern theatre really needs Stanislavski they discover that art lacks its most essential part – the human being.

The main character is Viktor Shtrum, a talented Soviet physicist who refuses to blindly follow his "comrades" by signing false documents and becoming a tool in the hands of an all-powerful state. During the war, Shtrum’s mother, Anna Petrovna, was sent to a concentration camp, but her letters continued to arrive for many years and help him remain more moral than those around him.

At first glance, the title of Shostakovich’s opera seems to speak for itself: Katherina, neglected and unhappy in her marriage, commits the most heinous crime just like the Shakespearian Lady Macbeth. But Nikolai Leskov’s short novel, which portrays Katherina as a monster, was only the starting point for Shostakovich to elicit understanding for an oppressed woman whose pursuit for self-determination is suppressed by society. Through combining satiric, grotesque and tragic elements in his music, Shostakovich succeeds in striking the balance between repulsion at Katherina’s immoral acts and sympathy for her. Violence, eroticism and the paralysing boredom of Russian society in the 19th century are the founding elements of this composition. The choir and orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino conducted by James Conlon accompany tremendous soloists such as Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Vladimir Vaneev and Vsevolod Grivnov in the original language in this live recording.

A television play based on stories by Alexander Grin. Five sailing ships are blocked in the port of Lissa by an enemy privateer. The captains of four of these ships gather around a hotel table, pondering how to set sail and outsmart the privateer's vigilance...

The main character is Viktor Shtrum, a talented Soviet physicist who refuses to blindly follow his "comrades" by signing false documents and becoming a tool in the hands of an all-powerful state. During the war, Shtrum’s mother, Anna Petrovna, was sent to a concentration camp, but her letters continued to arrive for many years and help him remain more moral than those around him.

At first glance, the title of Shostakovich’s opera seems to speak for itself: Katherina, neglected and unhappy in her marriage, commits the most heinous crime just like the Shakespearian Lady Macbeth. But Nikolai Leskov’s short novel, which portrays Katherina as a monster, was only the starting point for Shostakovich to elicit understanding for an oppressed woman whose pursuit for self-determination is suppressed by society. Through combining satiric, grotesque and tragic elements in his music, Shostakovich succeeds in striking the balance between repulsion at Katherina’s immoral acts and sympathy for her. Violence, eroticism and the paralysing boredom of Russian society in the 19th century are the founding elements of this composition. The choir and orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino conducted by James Conlon accompany tremendous soloists such as Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Vladimir Vaneev and Vsevolod Grivnov in the original language in this live recording.