Lyudmila Zalozhneva

Movies

The Railway
Editor
Mischa, a mute boy, sets out on a surrealistic journey together with his father and two men. Their means of transportation is an old Soviet locomotive, loaded with stolen coal. The travellers intend to sell off the loot on their way through the borderless steppes of inner Russia. As a parallel to the main plot, sequences of a mysterious travelling circus keep reappearing in a very suggestive way. Many of the odd artists at the circus are people that the four protagonists encounter in the wilderness along the overgrown railway. All through the movie there is a sensation of magic crossed with pure realism, stressed by the crackling communistic infrastructure and a twisted sense of humor. The border between reality and fantasy is very subtle here. The Railway is a story about strong family ties, but also an ambitious interpretation of the clash between the Russia of old and new. One could call it the rebirth of a long forgotten genre: the Russian wonder story.
First on the Moon
Editor
In spring 1938 in the mountains in the north of Chile a fiery UFO, later named "Chilean Sphere ", fell down. The investigation of this episode, made by a film crew, has led to a sensational discovery. It appeared that before the Second World War (in the thirties) in the USSR a secret space program had been developed. The Soviet scientists and military authorities managed to launch the first spacecraft 23 years prior to Jury Gagarin's flight! "The First on the Moon" tells about everyday life, heroic deeds and tragedy of the first group of the Soviet cosmonauts. It is the first Russian film shot in a very rare genre 'mockumentary' or 'documentary fiction'.
Pink Doll
Editor
A careless mother is going on a date with another fan and, in order to brighten up her daughter's loneliness, leaves her alone with a pink doll - the same doll that "wanders around the city and why it is vain to destroy little children". The girl considers the doll to be very realistic, therefore she associates it with herself, and herself with her mother. So begin the serious experiences of a girl who understands that this doll bought off her. At night, the girl dreams a terrible dream in which the doll embodies all her fears... "Pink Doll" creates the illusion of a spellbound fall into the abyss of children's dreams, fantasies and nightmares. The sensual effect is achieved by the game of scale and angle, the nervous rhythm of intraframe movement and graphic thickening of reality.