‘Astenicheskiy sindrom (Asthenic Syndrome) – Kira Muratova’

The screening will be followed by a conversation in French with Eugénie Zvonkine.

In the old days it was called hypochondria, or black melancholia. Now, apparently, it's termed the ‘asthenic syndrome’. Whatever it is, Nikolai, a teacher of epically indifferent pupils, has got it, and it's not much fun. Worse still, the problem seems to be spreading to others and even to a whole society.

Kira Mouratova was born in 1934 in Soroca (Moldova) and died in June 2018 in Odessa (Ukraine). An uncompromising, indomitable and tireless director, she was a leading figure in Soviet and Ukrainian cinema from the 1960s to the 21st century. In 45 years, she made sixteen feature films and four shorts. Censored under the Soviet regime and then dismissed from directing, she nevertheless managed to resist in many difficult contexts and to get through the end of the Soviet era, the in-between period of perestroika and then the first post-Soviet decades and the collapse of the film industry. Her latest films are produced with the support of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture.

Eugénie Zvonkine is an associate professor in the film studies department at the University of Paris 8. She writes on history and aesthetics in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema from the 1960s to the present day. She has published three monographs, including Kira Mouratova: un cinéma de la dissonance (2012) and the commented translation of Muratova's unrealised script Regardez attentivement vos rêves (2019).