A black and white still of a group of Ukrainian people sitting around a table. The man in the foreground is looking off into the distance and singing.
A black and white still of a group of Ukrainian people sitting around a table. The man in the foreground is looking off into the distance and singing.
Brief Encounters (1967) Kira Muratova

The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present

Brief Encounters

Kira Muratova | Soviet Union | 1967 | Unclassified (15+)
Film

This event has ended and tickets are no longer available.

When

Wed 3 Aug 2022

Shelved for 20 years by Soviet censors, celebrated Ukrainian writer-director Kira Muratova’s first feature contains the building blocks of her experimental style including the use of flashbacks, deployment of unconventional narrative forms, montages of still photographs and audio discontinuities. Focusing on the realm of women, and depicting a love triangle between a provincial bureaucrat (played by Muratova), a wandering geologist (famed singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky) and a country girl (Nina Ruslanova) trying her luck in the city, this is a documentary-like portrayal of Soviet life highlighting the divide between the urban intelligentsia and the underprivileged peasants.

Digital restoration courtesy of the Dovzhenko Centre.

Format: DCP, Black & White
Language: Russian
Source: Dovzhenko Centre
Courtesy: Dovzhenko Centre
Runtime: 98 mins

Event duration

98 mins

Rating

Unclassified (15+)

Where

Cinema 1, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

How to get there

Membership options

Mini membership
(3 consecutive weeks)
$27–$32

Annual memberships
$153–295

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Also screening on Wed 3 August

Program

Masterpieces of Ukrainian Cinema

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) – Wed 20 Jul, 7pm
Atlantis (2019) – Wed 20 Jul, 8.55pm
Earth (1930) – Wed 27 Jul, 7pm
The Tribe (2014) – Wed 27 Jul, 8.35pm
Brief Encounters (1967) – Wed 3 Aug, 7pm
Volcano (2018) – Wed 3 Aug, 8.50pm

View the full program

About the program

Masterpieces of Ukrainian Cinema

2022 marks the centenary of Ukrainian feature filmmaking. This season assembles six masterworks of Ukrainian cinema, all canonised by the Dovzhenko Centre (the Ukrainian national film archive in Kyiv) and includes three landmark titles from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic era (1922–1991) – all of which were at ideological odds with the official doctrines of their times – and three from the 21st century...

Masterpieces of Ukrainian Cinema - Melbourne Cinémathèque

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About Melbourne Cinémathèque

Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.

Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven. 

Learn more | View the 2022 program | See membership options