LITTLE VERA
Soviet decline, nudity, Playboy bunnies. Get your tickets.
This is a friendly reminder to everyone who lives in the New York area that tickets are now on sale for the next film in our SOVIET COLLAPSE CINEMA SERIES. We’re screening LITTLE VERA, a Soviet film that came out in 1988 about the life of a typical late Soviet girl. Sunday, July 12th at 7 p.m. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
I was the first Soviet film to feature nudity and a sex scene. And, in a foreshadowing of the extreme prostitutization that would happen to so many Russian women after the Soviet collapse, Natalya Negoda, the actress who played the leading role, posed naked in Playboy in 1989 to promote the film abroad. So Little Vera is not just a great film, it’s prophetic in a lot of ways.
Evgenia and I will discuss the film and its political and cultural context during a Q&A after the film.
Here is Natalya Negoda on the cover:
Want to know more? Check out the rest of the NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS SOVIET COLLAPSE CINEMA SERIES! Happening every Sunday the entire month of July in Greenpoint.
I enjoyed attending and seeing the film.
I thought of these questions afterwards:
Was the film [100%] state funded?
If so, did the script, and then the final cut of movie, have to go through a Review Committee before being allowed to be released?
If the movie did financially well at the Russian box offices, then were the director, actors, and crew, allowed to share in some of the profits -- on top of the salaries already paid to them, or would those excess monies go directly to the Soviet Art Council's coffers?
Home is where the hatred is. But the 90's were so much worse. I'm happy for the actress' personal accomplishments. But ever Playboy spread I've ever seen has exactly the same poses. It's tawdry.