Brief Encounters
Dir: Kira Muratova.
With: Nina Ruslanova, Vladimir Vysotskiy, Kira
Muratova. Ukraine
1967. 96 mins. Russian with English Subtitles.
Ukrainian director
Kira Muratova was one of the most brilliant and prolific film - makers of Soviet and post- Soviet cinema but remains remarkably little - known in this country. She made an astonishing twenty - one films from 1961 – 2012. She lived, worked - and died in 2018 – in her adopted city of Odessa.

Brief Encounters, her first solo feature is a beautifully unfolding love triangle with echoes of the French New Wave. Valentina is a young woman who seemingly has everything: a good job, a husband and high social status. But she remains unfulfilled. Her geologist husband (cult folk singer Vladimir Vysotsky) is often away and her work in public administration tedious. Then a young woman (Nina Ruslanova) arrives on her doorstep. Kira Muratova played the part of Valentina herself when the original ead actress proved unsuitable.

Brief Encounters fell foul of theCommunist party’s arbiters of taste because of its fragmented use of flashbacks and poetic approach(characteristic of Muratova) and was largely unseen until the advent of perestroika.

This screening is part of the UK/Ukraine Season:
https://ukuaseason.org/ a new programme of cultural activity to support the Ukrainian cultural sector, produced by the British Council and Ukrainian Institute