Week 2: Love, Loss, and Politics
Section 1: Tuesday, October 20, 5-8 pm

Little Moscow , Poland, 2008. Dir.: Waldemar Krystek
Presented by Kenneth Brostrom

Little Moscow(Mala Moscowa) centers on a love affair between the wife of a Russian military pilot and a Polish lieutenant. The setting is Legnica, a city where the largest Soviet military installation in Poland was located during the Cold War (hence its nickname "Little Moscow"). The action occurs during 1967-68, with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) figuring importantly in the plot. Polish cinema has explored the devastating impact of totalitarianism on the individual many times, but never in such a context. Noted Polish writer-director Waldermar Krzystek (Suspended, Dismissed From Life) lived in Legnica for over 20 years, which helps to explain why his portrait of the tension-filled, but sometimes genuinely friendly, Soviet-Polish relations of that time rings so true. (Sources: film.com and the Alissa Simon)

Dr. Kenneth Brostrom is Associate Professor of Russian in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. His areas of specialty are 19th and 20th-century Russian literature, Slavic film, and literary theory.