Trieste. Alpe Adria Film Festival & Vadim Abdrashitov

I'm off on a trip to Italy firstly to visit friends and attend the Alpe Adria film festival in Trieste and then to spend some time in Liguria. I'll try to send a couple of posts on the film festival (though few Russian films are showing here, the most high profile of which, however, is the Todorovsky musical 'Stilyagi' Hipsters) and will resume fuller postings later in February when I shall have more time to add the postings that I have written in the meantime.

Yesterday I hoped to post a long post commemorating the Markelov and Baburova murders and a reflection on the film 'Russia 88' which has finally passed the obtuse censors but alas a cranky computer prevented me from doing this. 19th January was also the birthday of Vadim Abdrashitov - a film director barely known in the West but one of Russia's finest. A director who developed a style of cinema with his script writer Mindadze mixing a form of social realism with forms of the fantastic. A director who has rarely been shown abroad but who deserves to be more widely known.

My post on Markelov and Baburova & Russia 88 will be posted later.