Cambridge Ukrainian Studies hosts a public screening and discussion of legendary director Kira Muratova's 'Eternal Homecoming' (Vechnoe vozvrashchenie, Ukraine, 2012, 108 minutes, subtitled in English). The screening is made possible by the film's producers SOTA Cinema Group (Ukraine). This event is part of the International Symposium on 'New Directions in Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema Studies' that will take place in Trinity College (Cambridge), 18-20 September, in honour of Julian Graffy, Emeritus Professor of Russian Literature and Cinema.

The event is free and open to the public, but places are limited. To be sure of a seat, please book your FREE ticket via this website. If/when all available tickets are booked, we will maintain an electronic waiting list. We will also release any unclaimed bookings at the venue promptly at 7:30, giving first preference to those on the electronic waiting list.

The film will be introduced by Eugénie Zvonkine (Paris VIII); Nancy Condee (Pittsburgh) and Julian Graffy (UCL) will lead a brief discussion afterwards. All three have written memorably about Muratova's work: It will be a rare treat to hear them in conversation about this remarkable recent film by one of the most important and prolific directors to emerge from the (now former) Soviet Union.

Muratova has declared that this film, her 17th full-length feature, will be her last. Inspired, she has said, by her frustration with overly neat narrative structure, the film’s minimalist plot consists of ‘eternal returns’ to the same situation: a man visits an old school friend, a woman whom he knew a long time ago in school, to ask for advice. Variations on this visit and the ensuing conversation are repeated throughout the film: each time with a different set of actors and inflections. Shot almost entirely in brilliant black and white, the film features many of Muratova’s favorite actors, among them many non-professionals who have become 'actors' in Muratova's earlier films, as well as stars of stage and screen Alla Demidova, Renata Litvinova, Sergei Makovetskii and Oleg Tabakov.

Eternal Homecoming premiered at the Rome Film Festival in 2012 and won the 2013 'Nika' for 'Best Film from the CIS and Baltic States' in 2013. It has screened at many international film festivals in Western and Eastern Europe. The Cambridge screening is the film's first public showing in the UK.

For a subtitled excerpt from the film, click on this link.

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Kira Muratova was born in Soroki, Romania (now Moldova) in 1934. She was educated in Moscow, where she graduated from the directing faculty of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in 1962. She has lived and worked almost exclusively in Odessa since moving there to make her first feature film in 1964. Her early career was difficult: her first three solo efforts were shelved–for alleged violations of Soviet aesthetic and political norms–and she was unable to make any films during the final decade of the Brezhnev era. The political and cultural shifts of perestroika brought new filmmaking possibilities and new audiences, both in the Soviet Union and abroad: her earlier works were re-released to wide acclaim and her Aesthenic Syndrome (1989) was hailed as the quintessential film of its era, winning the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and a host of other prizes. Muratova's work has since received major prizes from festivals and arts foundations all over the world. Ukraine claims her as its most accomplished living filmmaker and has showered her with honours. Soviet film historians claim her for their own pantheon of 'greats', as do feminist film scholars. When Western critics encounter her work, the comparisons they make are with the films of Fellini, Resnais, Truffaut, von Stroheim. Muratova herself, however, resists labels and categories of all kinds. She doesn't mind, as she noted in a recent interview, being called a genius, but she could get along without any names at all, if producers would just come up with the money to make more films.