SFFS Screen Presents: The Vanished Empire October 23, 2009

The Vanished Empire, Karen Shakhnazarov, a prolific and under-recognized Russian filmmaker with a surrealist touch, views the collapse of the Soviet Union as an inevitable conflation of the younger generation’s natural impulse to reject the past and of the seductive power of a monolithic pop culture that can seep through the most rigidly patrolled borders. The movie doesn’t strain for symbolism, but you might view Sergey, wonderfully played by Alexander Lyapin, as the embodiment of a young generation of Russians recklessly barging into an unforeseeable future. He is the ringleader of a group of three close friends, including Kostya (Ivan Kupreyenko), the bass player in a local rock band, and the earnest, geeky Stepan (Yegor Baranovsky), who share the usual excruciating postadolescent rites of passage.

This wise, elegiac film embraces a view of history that is more far-reaching than the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

Official Website: http://www.sffs.org/content.aspx?pageid=1279