The Klassiki Podcast
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.
Episodes
5 days ago
5 days ago
In this guide, first published on the Klassiki Journal and written and read by host Sam Goff, we introduce the cinema of Poland in the 1980s. The last decade of communist rule was a period marked by the brutality of martial law, but also the emergence of critical new voices and masterpieces from figures such as Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, and Krzysztof Kieślowski.
Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collection of Polish titles. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Monday Oct 28, 2024
This month saw the 68th edition of the London Film Festival hit the capital’s cinemas. Host Sam Goff went down to the festival press circuit to get hold of two of Eastern Europe’s finest: Georgia’s Dea Kulumbegashvili, whose abortion drama April has been turning heads since it won the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival; and Bulgaria’s Petar Valchanov, whose latest stranger-than-fiction tale recreates a bizarre episode from his nation’s recent history involving psychics and alien artefacts...
Watch Petar’s 2019 drama The Father on Klassiki now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Monday Oct 21, 2024
Georgian filmmaker Sandro Koberidze joins host Sam Goff to chat about his forthcoming film Dry Leaf and the hidden connections between his two great passions: cinema and football.
Watch Sandro’s award-winning What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? on Klassiki now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Oct 14, 2024
Monday Oct 14, 2024
Host Sam Goff sits down with Polish filmmaker Damian Kocur to discuss his new Ukraine war drama Under the Volcano. The film follows a Ukrainian family who are vacationing in Tenerife when the full-scale war breaks out back home, leaving them stranded on the island. Damian explains how he applied his idiosyncratic filmmaking technique to this story of grief and dislocation, and how the war has affected both Ukrainian filmmakers and their neighbours in eastern Europe.
Watch Damian’s debut feature Bread and Salt on Klassiki now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Oct 07, 2024
Monday Oct 07, 2024
The Klassiki Podcast is back for our second season. We’re kicking off with an interview with author Owen Hatherley about the history of the tower block on screen. Widely understood in the West as symbolic of the grey monotony of life behind the Iron Curtain, the prefab tower block remains misunderstood more than three decades after the fall of communism.
To get past the clichés, host Sam Goff sat down with Owen to discuss five films set in and around these mass housing monoliths, from five different directors – including iconic auteurs Béla Tarr, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Věra Chytilová – to see how the image of the block changed over time.
Check out Owen’s books about his journeys through Eastern Europe, Landscapes of Communism and The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Jul 29, 2024
Monday Jul 29, 2024
In this profile, written by critic and curator Rachel Pronger and first published on the Klassiki Journal, we introduce you to one of the most consequential and misunderstood figures in Soviet film history: Yuliya Solntseva. A silent star who became one half of Ukraine’s most influential creative marriage but whose place in history has been obscured for too long.
Klassiki subscribers can watch Solntseva’s iconic performances in Aelita and Earth now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Jul 22, 2024
Monday Jul 22, 2024
Host Sam Goff is joined by two representatives of the so-called “film movement” in Georgia – Keti Machavariani of the Georgian Film Institute, and Keto Kipiani of the Documentary Association of Georgia – to discuss cinema’s place in the ongoing protest movement against the increasing authoritarianism of the country’s government. They explain the situation on the ground for filmmakers and how the film world relates to the wider protest movement fighting for Georgia’s future.
Klassiki subscribers can explore our collection of Georgian titles here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Jul 15, 2024
Monday Jul 15, 2024
In this guide, first published on the Klassiki Journal and written and read by host Sam Goff, we introduce the cinema of the Soviet Thaw. As a new era of cultural freedom swept the USSR after the death of Stalin, iconic directors like Mikhail Kalatozov and Marlen Khutsiev created a new cinematic language defined by sincerity and stylistic innovation.
Read the original piece here and make sure to explore our collections of classic Soviet and cult sixties film. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Jul 08, 2024
Monday Jul 08, 2024
Dan Bird is one of the world’s leading specialists on cult cinema from Eastern Europe. His work in restoration and distribution has played a key role in preserving the legacies of iconic filmmakers like Andrzej Żuławski and Sergei Parajanov. He joins host Sam Goff to discuss a career spent traversing Eastern Europe in search of hidden gems.
Klassiki subscribers can watch a cult cinema playlist inspired by Dan’s adventures here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
Monday Jul 01, 2024
Monday Jul 01, 2024
In this piece, first published on the Klassiki Journal by critic Sonya Vseliubska and read here by host Oliver Hunt, we introduce the wild world of the Czech New Wave, one of the most influential movements in Central and Eastern European cinema. Blending aesthetic and philosophical innovations from France and Italy, the New Wave gave us legendary figures like Věra Chytilová, František Vláčil, and Miloš Forman.
Read Sonya’s piece here and make sure to explore our collection of Central European film. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.
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