17.10.2026 at 21:15. Developing. The Leningrad School of Documentary Cinema, Dom Kino, Big Hall

Time and place

Saturday, 17 October 2026 at 21:15
Dom Kino Cinema Center – Big Hall: Karavannaya Street, 12
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Description

Look at the Face
1966, USSR, 11 min., o.v. - Russian, , Documentary
Director: Pavel Kogan

Marina’s Life
1966, USSR, 20 min., o.v. - Russian,  , Documentary
Director: Leonid Kvinikhidze

Difficult Lads
1966, USSR, 19 min., o.v. - Russian,  , Documentary
Director: Mikhail Litvyakov

Look at the Face

Genres: Documentary, Short-length

Director: Pavel Kogan

Operator: Pyotr Mostovoy

Screenwriter: Sergei Soloviov

Composer: V. Arzumanov, Nina Zinina

Producer company : Leningrad Newsreel Studio

Year: 1966

Country: USSR

Duration: 11 min.

Description

The Hermitage Museum. Visitors gather around a tour guide. “You are standing before Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Madonna Litta. Look at her face: it is beautiful.” A hidden camera studies the faces of the people assembled in the museum with the same “careful, attentive, loving regard for the human being” as da Vinci’s painting itself.

About the director:

Pavel Kogan

Director, Honoured Artist of Russia. Born in Leningrad in 1931. His films Look at the Face and A Military Band became key works of the Leningrad Studio of Documentary Film (LSDF). Together with cinematographer Pyotr Mostovoy he helped shape a distinctive language of Leningrad documentary cinema, one that values the human face, the telling detail, and the independent life of the material observed.

Marina’s Life

Genres: Documentary, Short-length

Director: Leonid Kvinikhidze

Operator: Pyotr Mostovoy

Screenwriter: Aleksandr Shlepaynov

Producer company : Leningrad Newsreel Studio

Year: 1966

Country: USSR

Duration: 20 min.

Description

The central figure, Marina, recalls an unfulfilled dream of becoming an actress and speaks of the challenging time of the siege of Leningrad. Her account is heard over footage from a restaurant catering to young visitors where she is waiting tables. Fingers moving over the valves of a trumpet; the heels of shoes tapping out a rhythm on the parquet floor; girls waiting anxiously to be asked for a dance. A hidden camera records a place full of joy and ease, while Marina’s memories run on the soundtrack.

About the director:

Leonid Kvinikhidze

Director and screenwriter, Honoured Artist of Russia. Born in Leningrad in 1937; graduated from the directing faculty of VGIK in 1962. Early in his career he worked at the Central Documentary Film Studio and the Leningrad Newsreel Studio, where he made several documentaries, including Marina’s Life. He later moved to Lenfilm and then to Mosfilm.

Difficult Lads

Genres: Documentary, Short-length

Director: Mikhail Litvyakov

Operator: Mikhail Mass

Screenwriter: V. Vendelovskiy, Mikhail Litvyakov

Producer company : Leningrad Newsreel Studio

Year: 1966

Country: USSR

Duration: 19 min.

Description

A short but highly expressive chronicle of life in a camp for troubled adolescents. Criminal songs, collectivism, faith in corrective labour and lofty ideals, theft and chastity. Difficult Lads captures the atmosphere of the era, the mood and the social contrasts of Leningrad in the 1960s Thaw. At the same time, it tries to understand why the radiant energy of youth sometimes leads to destructive ends.

About the director:

Mikhail Litvyakov

Documentary director and one of the central figures of the LSDF. Born in 1938 in Pushkin. After VGIK he worked from 1965 as a director at the Leningrad Studio of Documentary Film. In 1989 he founded the Message to Man Film Festival; he is now its Honorary President.



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