
Ivan Turgenev
Writing
Biography
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. Turgenev made his name with 'A Sportsman's Sketches', also known as 'Sketches from a Hunter's Album' or 'Notes of a Hunter', a collection of short stories, based on his observations of peasant life and nature, while hunting in the forests around his mother's estate of Spasskoye. The book is credited with having influenced public opinion in favour of the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Turgenev himself considered the book to be his most important contribution to Russian literature. One of the stories, 'Bezhin Lea' or 'Byezhin Prairie', was to become the basis for Sergei Eisenstein's controversial film Bezhin Meadow (1937). In the early 1850s, Turgenev wrote several novellas ('The Diary of a Superfluous Man', 'Faust', 'The Lull') expressing the anxieties and hopes of Russians of his generation. During the period of 1853–62 Turgenev wrote some of his finest stories as well as the first four of his novels: 'Rudin' (1856), 'A Nest of the Gentry' (1859), 'On the Eve' (1860) and 'Fathers and Sons' (1862). Fathers and Sons remains Turgenev's most famous novel. The novel examined the conflict between the older generation, reluctant to accept reforms, and the nihilistic youth.
Known For

An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.
The Wednesday Play

Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.
Theatre 625

An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.
BBC2 Play of the Week

Christopher Lee hosts this horror anthology series from Poland with stories from various classic authors.
Theatre Macabre

In 19th-century Russia, two young men start to question their worldview after it gets challenged by people from the older generation.
Fathers and Sons

An impromptu singing contest at a dive bar turns a lonely night into a soul-baring moment of shared harmony.
The Singers

Dustin Hoffman stars in this television adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's tale about Dmitri Zoditch, a simple manuscript reader at a publishing house whose grand dreams don't square with his dead-end job and miserable apartment. When he's assigned to read the diary of a nobleman, he finds bitter parallels between his own pathetic existence and the wasted life described in the journal. Michael Tolan and Charlotte Rae co-star.
The Journey of the Fifth Horse

A younger boy falls in love with a tragic girl who flirts with, and manipulates, her older suitors in 1800s Russia.
All Forgotten

A modern adaptation of a famous classis Ivan Turgenev novel.
Mu-Mu

In the house of Daria Mikhailovna Lasunskaya, a noble and wealthy landowner, former beauty and lioness of the capital, who even far from civilization still organizes her salon, a certain Baron, erudite and expert in philosophy, who promised to introduce his scientific research, is waiting. Instead of the expected celebrity arrives Dmitri Nikolaevich Rudin, whom the Baron instructed to deliver his article. Rudin charms everyone with his erudition, originality and logical thinking. Lasunskaya is determined to make the ornament of his salon. During the two months that Rudin spends at Lasunskaya's, he becomes indispensable to her. But Rudin's misfortune is that while he inflames others, he himself remains as cold as ice, never thinking that his words "may confuse and destroy a young heart".
Rudin
A moral story about two people who have completely different attitudes to life and people. The duel of the heroes ends tragically.
Zabijaka

After a long absence from St. Petersburg, a young landowner Yeletskaya comes to her estate with her husband.
The Parasite

A screen adaptation of the novel of the same name by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. The film portrays the life of Russian landed gentry in the 1840s. After a long travel in Europe, nobleman Lavretsky returns back home. Everything in his estate is so familiar and dear to his heart. On his first visit to his neighbors, the Kalitins, he meets Lisa. He forgets his wife, left in Paris, forgets all his past. He desires only one thing – to always be with Lisa who is so unlike the women he used to know.
A Nest of Gentry

Lavretsky returns to Russia from Europe and joins the group of admirers of his beautiful young cousin Liza.
Liza

Based on the story of the same name by I. Turgenev. A story about the romantic feeling of falling in love with a young man for whom everything is for the first time.
The First Love
In 1887 France, a mother is starting to become worried about her young son. He has a recurring dream in which he looks for his dead father. His mother gets worried even more when he tells her that he has met a wealthy nobleman who wants to take him aboard ship for a trip to the West Indies.
The Dream

Dmitry Nikolaevich Rudin appears at the estate of the wealthy lady Daria Mikhailovna Lasunskaya. A meeting with him becomes an event that attracts the most interested attention of the inhabitants and guests of the estate...
Rudin

First Love is based on the eponymous novella by Ivan Turgenev set in the first third of the 19th century. It follows a 16-year old boy who becomes infatuated with a next door neighbor.
First Love

Based on the short story by F.M. Dostoevsky "The Eternal Husband", the comedy by I.S. Turgenev "The Provincial Girl".
The Husband, the Wife and the Lover

About the socio-political conflict between two worldviews, about the relationship between younger and older generations, about the eternal struggle between the old and the new, about true and false values, about creation and destruction, about human strength and weakness, about friendship, love, and loneliness... What could be more acute and tragic than a conflict between people who are closest to each other and sincerely love each other? But, alas, such a conflict is inevitable whenever the interests of two generations collide.