Musical prelude with Georgetown University Chamber Singers
Roy Guenther and Peter Rollberg, discussants

Before World War II Russian film director Grigori Kozintsev directed a stage version of King Lear in a Russian translation by Boris Pasternak. In 1970 he revisited this text to make his film adaptation, shooting on austere landscapes in Estonia with a cast of Baltic actors including the revered Jüri Järvet in the title role. On the subject of Shostakovich's music, Kozintsev noted, "I can hear a ferocious hatred of cruelty, the cult of power, and the oppression of justice . . . a fearless goodness which has a threatening quality." (Grigori Kozintsev, 1971, 35 mm, Russian with subtitles, 139 minutes)

Musical prelude: Shostakovich Satires, op. 109
Irina Mozyleva, soprano, and Vera Danchenko-Stern, piano
Roy Guenther and Peter Rollberg, discussants

Creatively pruning the text of Shakespeare's play, Russian director Grigori Kozintsev remains true to the structure, although a number of familiar scenes have been shortened or rendered in visual terms sans dialogue. "Hamlet" has always been filmed in studios but it seems to me that the key to reincarnating Shakespeare's words in visual imagery can only be found in nature . . . . In decisive places, [we must] oust period stylization of the Tudor era and of English affectation, and express the essentials. I have in mind stone, iron, fire, earth, and sea." Laurence Olivier proclaimed it the best adaptation ever. (Grigori Kozintsev, 1964, 35 mm, Russian with subtitles, 140 minutes)

North American premiere
Roy Guenther, Tony Palmer, Peter Rollberg, and Solomon Volkov, discussants

When Red Army captain Lenov arrives in Dresden in May 1945, the city has been reduced to rubble. Ordered to find hundreds of old master paintings (including Raphael's Sistine Madonna altarpiece) that had disappeared from the State Art Collection, Lenov succeeds in locating a hidden cache with the help of Dresden residents eager to rebuild. Several more days and nights will go by, however, before the remainder of the collection is found. The first ever GDR-Soviet coproduction, Five Days, Five Nights is a rare fictional work about the wartime looting of art. This screening represents the first time the film has been subtitled in English. Shostakovich composed the score using parts of his String Quartet no. 8. (Fünf Tage, Fünf Nächte, Lew Arnstam, 1960, 35 mm, German and Russian with subtitles, 100 minutes). Made possible through the support of DEFA—Stiftung, Berlin, and the DEFA Film Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Roy Guenther, Tony Palmer, Peter Rollberg, and Solomon Volkov, discussants

Director Tony Palmer's epic version of Solomon Volkov's edition of Shostakovich's memoirs is a milestone of the biographical film, in part for the way the music illustrates the life. With Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich and Terence Rigby as Stalin, the film features the London Philharmonic conducted by Rudolf Barshai, who in fact knew Dmitri Shostakovich. Palmer notes, "It is clear to me now that if we want to know what it was like to live under Stalin in the Soviet Union from 1924 until 1953, the year of Stalin's death, listen to Shostakovich. It's all we've got." (Tony Palmer, 1988, 35 mm, 157 minutes)

Roy Guenther, Tony Palmer, Peter Rollberg, and Solomon Volkov, discussants

Originally produced on behalf of the 1953 congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions, Song of the Rivers is a footage compilation that became a classic expression of the international solidarity movement. Shot by crews on the Volga, Mississippi, Nile, Yangtze, Amazon, and Ganges, the workers' destinies are united by these rivers coursing through their native lands. At the East German DEFA Stiftung studio in Berlin, the editing was supervised by Joris Ivens and then distributed in 28 languages. The project brought together many artists including Shostakovich, Bertolt Brecht, and Paul Robeson, as well as Ivens and the other filmmakers. (Das Lied der Ströme, Joris Ivens and others, 1954, 35 mm, subtitles, 103 minutes) Made possible through the support of DEFA — Stiftung, Berlin, and the DEFA Film Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.