Alla Demidova

From Alla Demidova's book "Akhmatova Mirrors": "When I began to decipher the "Poem without a hero", the more I found doubles in it, which, in turn, bifurcated and so on — to infinity (the same thing happens if you approach the wall of the mirror hall with a mirror and see in it an infinite a series of reflections), the more clearly I understood that it was probably not necessary to literally decipher it. Specific persons are not so important in the "Poem", the fragrance of time is important, because, among other things, a huge layer of culture of an entire epoch has entered into the "Poem", which for many young people today has become a long-past history."

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A woman is paid a surprise visit by her long-forgotten classmate, who needs her advice: should he choose a wife or a lover? An outrageously burlesque mise-en-scène is repeated many times but each time in a different place and performed by new actors. Why?

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A two-part documentary about the fraught relationship between Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky and émigré linguist Roman Jakobson.

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The mistress of a once prosperous, but now frustrated estate, wants to improve her affairs at the expense of neighboring possessions belonging to the rich widow Evlampia Kupavina. The lady hatches an ingenious plan using forged documents in order to marry her wayward nephew Apollosha to the widow.

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A young piano tuner befriends two rich old-ladies, and plots, with the help of his girlfriend, to betray their trust and steal from them.

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The film is dedicated to the tragic fate of the outstanding theater director, founder of the famous Chamber Theater Alexander Tairov. Tairov's performances "Princess Brambilla", "Phaedra", "Love under the Elms", "Optimistic Tragedy" have gained worldwide fame. In 1949, during the so-called struggle against cosmopolitans, Tairov was released from the leadership of the Chamber Theater, the theater was renamed. Unable to withstand this blow, shocked by the betrayal of the actors he raised, crushed by the harassment of the press, Tairov died a year later in a psychiatric clinic...

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Charming young Olga marries a successful businessman. It is surrounded by luxury and well-being. A wealthy husband is ready to fulfill any whim of a beautiful wife. Olga is an airy woman who is fond of doing herbariums, sewing dolls, reciting poems to servants and loves her oligarch husband very much.

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Detective television series based on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. Five films about Sherlock Holmes, shot by Igor Maslennikov earlier, were remounted in 2000, a connecting story about Conan Doyle's literary secretary, Mr. Wood, who is preparing an anniversary collection of stories about Holmes for the beginning of the coming XX century. Sir Arthur receives huge mail every day, addressed not to him, but to Sherlock Holmes. And then one day a letter arrives with a plea for help, and Doyle begins an investigation...

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At the heart of the picture is a common legend about the last days of Emperor Alexander the First Blessed.

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The film is set in 1890s London. Sarah lived happily in India with her father, but when he was drafted into military service he placed Sarah in a boarding school in London. Sarah was lonely, but she made some good friends at school. Suddenly her father was announced dead in a mine accident and Sarah became an orphan. Now she goes on a long and dangerous journey to find her father, who loved her and called her a "little princess".

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An animated film in two parts, about the tragic fate of Estonian artist Ülo Sooster and about his work.

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The second part of the duology on the famous Estonian artist Ülo Sooster continues his life story, paying homage to many other great artists who were spiritually consonant with his work.

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The heroine of the film is a young attractive woman whose motto is “you need to become depraved to feel like a saint.” She is convinced that men who love her should easily accept her for who she is. But it only causes them pain...

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Blending drawings, paintings, filmed interviews, and recorded testimony, this animation-documentary hybrid tells of the tragic fate of the Estonian artist Ülo Sooster.

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A revelatory discussion on a train. Based on Leo Tolstoy's novel of the same name.

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The young hero's father, a famous test pilot, dies in an airplane crash. But comes the first deep feeling for the girl Tanya - and the hero finds the courage to overcome this seemingly intolerable grief. The action takes place in the fifties.

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A story from the life in the beginning of XX century based on the theater play by Maxim Gorky.

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The family of Russian intellectuals during the first Russian revolution is faced with a "cholera riot". One of the characters commits suicide, another goes mad, the third suffers from unrequited love.

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A drama from the life of two generations of a big family from Leningrad. Loosely based on a novel by Yuriy Nagibin.

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The poems of Alexander Blok are read by Alla Demidova and Vladimir Simonov.

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Based on Anna Ahmatova's translation of Korean poem about eternal love.

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Hermann is an officer of the engineers in the Imperial Russian Army. He constantly watches the other officers gamble, but never plays himself. One night, Tomsky tells a story about his grandmother, an elderly countess. Many years ago, in France, she lost a fortune at cards, and then won it back with the secret of the three winning cards, which she learned from the notorious Count of St. Germain. Hermann becomes obsessed with obtaining the secret.

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Falling Star is based on three stories by the contemporary Russian writer Viktor Astafyev and centers on a young soldier on the front lines who is wounded and taken to the hospital. Once there, he muses about his childhood and a little girl he had loved - someone who could easily have grown up to be the nurse that is attending to him now. As he recuperates, he and the nurse fall in love and he very much wants to marry her. At this point, the nurse's mother comes for a visit and advises him against such an action because if they were to marry and he were subsequently killed or maimed in action - the fighting is still close to the hospital - the nurse would suffer much more than if he just left her alone. Now it is up to the soldier to make a decision one way or the other.

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The second part of the Soviet TV adaption.

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The third part of the Soviet TV series based on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes. The events of the film take place in 1889. The country doctor Mortimer comes to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who visited the detective's apartment the day before in his absence and forgot his cane there. Mortimer tells the legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles, a hellish hound that has been haunting the Baskerville family from Devonshire for several centuries, and reports the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville, the owner of the Baskerville Hall estate. The newspapers write that Charles Baskerville's death was caused by a heart attack, allegedly he was very unwell, but Mortimer does not believe a single word of them, since he found tracks of a huge dog not far from the body of the deceased.

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The Hound of the Baskervilles is a 1981 Soviet film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was the third installment in the TV series about adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. A potent streak of humour ran through the film as concerns references to traditional British customs and stereotypes, ensuring the film's popularity with several generations of Russophone viewers. Other features of this best entry in the series include excellent exterior shots which closely match the novel's setting in the Dartmoor marshland, as well as an all-star cast: in addition to the famous Livanov -Solomin duo as Holmes and Watson, the film stars the internationally acclaimed actor/director Nikita Mikhalkov as Sir Henry Baskerville and the Russian movie legend Oleg Yankovsky as the villain Stapleton.

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When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead in his country house, Dr James Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes for help to save Sir Henry Baskerville, the only known heir, from the curse that haunts Baskerville family.

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson is a series of five films produced by Lenfilm for the Soviet Central Television, split into eleven episodes, starring Vasily Livanov as Sherlock Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Dr. Watson. They were directed by Igor Maslennikov and filmed in Russia (the then Soviet Union) between 1979 and 1986, and the series was one of the most successful in the history of Russian television.

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Pushkin and Puschin met at the Tsarskoye Selo Lycee. After the Decembrist revolt of 1825, Puschin was exiled to Siberia while Pushkin was allowed to return and later supported the Tsar. Despite the distance, their friendship endured through letters and poetry.

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When a small state is threatened with capture by a much stronger one, only one thing can save it: the emergence of a competitor comparable to the invader. In a graceful and witty play by Scribe, hostilities unfold around a young officer, in whom the modest saleswoman of a jewelry store, the omnipotent Duchess of Marlborough and the Queen of England herself fell in love at the same time.

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Prince Stepan Kasatsky is an officer, an ardent, proud young man, and a big fan of the tsar. Kasatsky is going to marry, but at the last moment he learns from the bride that she was the mistress of the emperor. The prince is deeply disappointed in social life, he takes a monastic vow and leaves the capital. Faith in God was to save the soul, but passions and worldly temptations don't leave Kasatsky.

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