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At the end of April, we’ll be running our third annual partnership with the goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film. To preview this exciting season, host Sam Goff sits down with Heleen Gerritsen, who is stepping down in 2025 as director of the festival after eight years at the helm.
Heleen has been at the forefront of curating Eastern European film during a turbulent and tragic period for the region. She shares her perspectives on how to engage with the new realities facing filmmakers and film lovers, highlights goEast’s retrospective of the Indigenous filmmaker Anastasia Lapsui, and selects some of her favourite discoveries from her time at the festival.
Klassiki’s partnership with goEast runs from 24 April - 22 May. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
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43:47
Caught by the night: the gothic visions of Juraj Herz
For this episode, we’re dipping back in to the archive of writing on the Klassiki Journal for an essay on the Slovak maestro of the macabre, Juraj Herz, written and read by Sam Goff. Best known for his controversial and politically charged 1969 horror film The Cremator, Herz remains the great outsider of the Czech New Wave – a Holocaust survivor who mined his personal trauma to produce some of the most striking gothic visions to be found anywhere in communist-era cinema.
Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of classic Czech and Slovak titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
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15:05
The Shards: Russia on the edge
This week, Klassiki is launching a new collection of Russian documentaries, exploring life in the country as repressions continue to intensify and the war on Ukraine stretches into its fourth year.
On the podcast this week, we’re highlighting another recent documentary that deserves wider attention – Masha Chernaya’s The Shards, which won best film at the DocLisboa festival last year. Shot in a raw, DIY style during the first months of the war, the film sees Chernaya and her cohort reflecting on a homeland that has changed beneath their feet. We see glimpses of underground culture, from raves to fight clubs, as well as an intimate exposure to personal tragedy as the filmmaker’s mother battles against cancer. Host Sam Goff sits down with Chernaya to explore about how she went about documenting the world around her and how she balanced the personal and political struggles she encountered on the way.
Our new season of Russian documentaries launches on Klassiki this Thursday 3 April. Find out more here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
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37:12
Jonas Mekas: a Lithuanian abroad
“The godfather of American avant-garde cinema“, Jonas Mekas left his native Lithuania in 1944, and a few years later moved to New York. His friendships and collaborations with the likes of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and Yoko Ono helped to consolidate the downtown art scene, and his impressionistic “diary films”, compiled from footage of his life that he obsessively shot on his handheld Bolex camera, have proved hugely influential on experimental film ever since.
Mekas never lost sight of his native Lithuania, returning to themes of dislocation and home throughout his career. His work speaks to the cinema traditions of the Baltic region more broadly. His attachment to Lithuanian national culture produced controversy at the end of his life when questions were raised about his work under Nazi occupation in the 1940s.
To untangle the question of Mekas, Lithuania, and the avant-garde, host Sam Goff speaks with Josh Polanski, a critic who specialises in cinema from the Baltic states. You can find Josh’s writing on Baltic film here, and explore our collection of films from the region here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
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45:56
Under the Grey Sky: inside the crisis in Belarus
In 2020, Belarus was rocked by mass protests following fraudulent presidential elections that returned autocratic leader Aleksandr Lukashenko to power. The new feature film from Belarusian-Polish director Mara Tamkovich, Under the Grey Sky, is based on the true story of a journalist, Kateryna Andreevna, who was arrested and charged with treason for broadcasting police brutality against protestors. Under the Grey Sky is screening across the UK now as part of this year’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival.
This week on the show, host Sam Goff sits down with Mara to discuss the real life events behind her film, and to try and shed light on the situation in Belarus – a country in the grip of a brutal regime, and one that remains party to the war in Ukraine, but which is too often absent from conversations about the region.
You can find information about screenings of Under the Grey Sky at this year’s Kinoteka Film Festival, both in London and on tour throughout the UK, on the festival site. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Delve into the wide world of Eastern European film with the Klassiki Podcast. Featuring interviews, roundtable discussions, recorded essays, and more, we take you beyond the headlines to explore the past, present, and future of this fascinating region. Sign up to Klassiki today to gain access to our ever-evolving library of classic and contemporary titles, as well as filmmaker interviews, video essays and introductions, programme notes, and much more.
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