Press Release……Press Release 

Banned Russian Film to screen at the Corona Cork Film Festival

The Corona Cork Film Festival which takes place from October 14-21 is set to screen
My Grandmother, a silent film directed by Soviet Georgian Director Kote Mikaberidze which was made in Georgia in the former Soviet Union in 1929 and banned by the Soviet Regime for 40 years.

The film tells the story of a Georgian paper pusher who loses his job and then spends a great deal of effort trying to find a “Grandmother” who will help him land another position. The character is modelled on the knockabout American silent film comic Harold Lloyd. 

My Grandmother is a delightful example of the Soviet Eccentric Cinema Movement as well as a scathing satire of Soviet bureaucracy. The film will be screened in the Cork Opera House at 8.30pm on Monday October 15 and the original soundtrack will be performed live by the Beth Custer Ensemble.

 

Custer’s kinetic score which is a mixture of American Jazz and blues, contemporary, classical and world folk music, matches the amped up energy of the film as it veers between stop motion animation, puppetry, exaggerated camera angles and constructive sets.

Mick Hannigan, Festival Director of the Corona Cork Film Festival said

“My Grandmother is a real curiosity. A wonderful surreal and anarchic attack on Soviet bureaucracy, it is unsurprising that it was banned for so many years. As well as making an effective political point, the film is terrifically entertaining. The new score by the Beth Custer Ensemble brings the film alive again for modern viewers”

In addition to the screening of My Grandmother the festival will also screen A Perfect Place, a Russian documentary which is set in Shikotan, a small beautiful island that is home to a group of self sufficient fishermen who have been abandoned by the Russian State. A Perfect Place will be screened on Monday 15 October at 1pm in the Kino Cinema.

Tickets for all screenings are available on www.corkfilmfest.org and in the Corona Cork Film Festival Box Office which is located in 56 Patrick’s Street, Top of Market Lane (021 4272263). The full festival programme is available on www.corkfilmfest.org

For further information please contact,
Eimear O’Brien,
Press Officer, Corona Cork Film Festival,
Tel: 021 4271711/ 086 8900364
Email: press@corkfilmfest.org