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Elena Antonova

Elena Antonova

Acting

Known For

An Independent Life
4.1

This is the second installment of a three-part series of autobiographical films about the director's life. The first, which won various awards for its maker, was entitled Zamri Oumi Voskresni and was later retitled Zari, Umri, Vokresni ("Freeze-Die-Come to Life"). At the end of that film, set at the conclusion of World War II, the young Valerka was striving hard to overcome the inertia of just getting by, along with his sometime friend Galiya. In this one, he is adjusting to Galiya's death and is back in school and is living with his mother, a prostitute. After a girl at the school is found to have been gang-raped, the headmaster chooses Valerka to be one of the scapegoats, though he had nothing to do with the deed. The punishment seems mild enough, he was simply expelled from school. However, after quarrelling with his mother about the incident, he takes to the road, and discovers a society so bleak, degraded and hopeless that it is a wonder he remained alive.

An Independent Life

1992Movie
The Chelyuskinites
8.0

In February 1934, the steamship Chelyuskin was crushed by ice and sank in the Chukchi Sea. The ship's crew and members of the scientific expedition landed on a drifting ice floe, where they remained for two months. How did people live on the ice floe? How did they cope with loneliness and dispel dark thoughts? In addition to work, when the weather was good, they played soccer, volleyball, and town ball. They went on ski trips. They read. They managed to save four books: Pushkin's poems, Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha," Hamsun's "Pan," and the third volume of Sholokhov's "Quiet Don." We reminisced about our former lives, watched the northern lights, fought illness, dreamed, froze... In the evenings, we listened to a precious Marlene Dietrich record—we managed to save the gramophone, but only with two records. We published a wall newspaper called "We Will Not Surrender." They tried to be witty, played pranks. They created a choir...

The Chelyuskinites

1985Movie