#soviet underground

Застава Ильича, Марлен Хуциев - Ilyich’s Gate, Marlen Khutsiev (1964)

This a wonderful film about the very beginning of the underground culture under Brezhnev rule in USSR - it’s about being young in Moscow in the 1960s, poetry reading, jazz and dance in shared flats and public places, generation’s conflicts about the meaning of WWII, a breathless conversation about the lost meanings of life and revolution in a Cold war context and so much more!

All of this filmed amazingly, with fantastic actors and urban landscapes 💜

At one point the main protagonist, unable to sleep as he keeps recalling his earlier encounter with his beloved, walks by night in the empty Moscow streets. The voice-over recites as a stream of consciousness the very last and unfinished poem written by Vladimir Mayakovsky, the final lines of which I keep recalling since yesterday again and again: 

Я знаю силу слов, я знаю слов набат Они не те, которым рукоплещут ложи От слов таких срываются гроба шагать четверкою своих дубовых ножек Бывает выбросят не напечатав не издав но слово мчится, подтянув подпруги звенит века, и подползают поезда лизать поэзии мозолистые руки Я знаю силу слов. Глядится пустяком опавшим лепестком под каблуками танца но человек душой губами костяком...

I know the force of words and warning they can sound I don’t mean those which draw front-row applause But words at which coffins break lose to pound the ground this way and that with heavy paws They may be cast out publishers ignore them But words forge on tighten their belly-bands ring through the centuries and trains come crawling to lick and fondle poetry’s horny hands I know the force of words They seem a petal flung Under the heels of dancers just a trifle But man possesses backbone heart and tongue…

В.В. Маяковский - V.V. Mayakovsky

Кинетические игры в Крыму 1971.