The Klassiki Podcast

2024 marks 80 years since the release of the great Sergei Eisenstein’s final, unfinished masterpiece: Ivan the Terrible. Commissioned by Stalin himself to make a biopic celebrating the bloodthirsty 16th-century tsar, Eisenstein instead produced a complex portrait of paranoia and power that remains relevant to this day.

To get to the heart of Eisenstein’s Ivan, host Sam Goff speaks with Joan Neuberger, Professor Emerita at the University of Texas and the author of This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia.

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This month, audiences in London have been revisiting the works of one of Russian cinema’s grandees, with a retrospective of the films of Aleksandr Sokurov, organised by the cultural institute Pushkin House. Best known in the West for his 2002 epic Russian Ark, Sokurov is arguably the last living embodiment of the classic Russian arthouse director, in all its contradictions. 

To make sense of Sokurov in 2024, host Sam Goff sits down with film historian and curator Ian Christie, who has been working on and with the director since the 1980s. 

Find out more about the Sokurov season and Pushkin House here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Legendary Polish director Agnieszka Holland joins host Oliver Hunt to discuss her ripped-from-the-headlines new film, Green Border. Tackling the refugee crisis that unfolded along the Poland-Belarus border in 2021, the film provoked political controversy within Poland, and shows Holland at her humanist best.

Green Border is out in the UK from 21 June. Make sure also to check out Holland’s 2017 eco-thriller Spoor, available now to Klassiki subscribers. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Film producer extraordinaire Ada Solomon joins host Sam Goff to take us behind the scenes of Romanian’s troubled but brilliant post-communist cinema. One of Eastern Europe’s most vital producers, Ada outlines the origins of the Romanian New Wave, the movement that rocked Europe in the 2000s. She also gets into her work with Radu Jude and others, and how her career bridges Eastern and Western Europe.

Make sure to check out our interview with Jude in the first episode of the Klassiki Podcast, and explore our collection of New Wave titles here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Acclaimed Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan joins host Sam Goff to discuss the role his Armenian heritage has played in his career. From his early features to his historical epic Ararat, Atom discusses how he’s grappled with personal and national history onscreen and the gems of classic Armenian film that have inspired him.

Delve into Atom’s recommendations by exploring our complete collection of Armenian film here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Film historian Ian Christie joins host Sam Goff to discuss his new book on the Factory of the Eccentric Actor: one of the most striking and under-appreciated corners of Soviet avant-garde cinema. Ian talks us through the wild world of 1920s Petrograd, how Eccentrism predicted the French New Wave, and the lessons it still bears for students of Russian culture today.

Buy Ian’s book Eccentrism Turns 100: FEKS and the Early Soviet Avant-Garde here. Read an exclusive extract on our Journal here. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Romania’s provocateur in chief Radu Jude joins host Sam Goff to discuss the runaway success of his hilarious new film, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. Along the way, Jude explains the the East-West crisis in European politics, his evolving approach to national history, and how TikTok is forcing filmmakers to adapt – or die. 

Watch Jude’s 2018 satire I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians on Klassiki now. Sign up for a free 7-day trial at klassiki.online.

Klassiki is a streaming platform with a difference. Dedicated to cinema from eastern Europe, we offer subscribers an ever-evolving library of classic and contemporary titles, featuring iconic figures like Andrei Tarkovsky and Kira Muratova as well as hidden gems, documentaries, animation, and more. Subscribers get access to all this, as well as filmmaker interviews, video essays and introductions, programme notes, and much more. We’re available in the US, the UK, and Ireland and you can sign up for a free 7-day trial today at klassiki.online.

To help take you further into the wide world of eastern European film, we’re launching the Klassiki Podcast, exploring the past, present, and future of this fascinating region. 

Each season of ten episodes will feature interviews, roundtable discussions, recorded essays, and more. Episodes will be released every Monday during each season and available on all major podcasting platforms. Make sure to subscribe now so you don’t miss a thing and tune in next week for our first show.