Have you ever heard of Red Westerns? I haven’t. Not until now at least. Have you seen any of them? I am sure you have. Most probably you, your parents, and the parents of your parents have seen one of the Red Westerns. Of course, I am talking about the legendary Nobody Wanted to Die produced by the Soviet Lithuanian Film Studio and directed by Vytautas Žalakevičius. What does it have to do with westerns, you may ask. In fact, it has to do a lot with them.

Kaunas International Film Festival is glad to introduce a retrospective of “Red Westerns” to our devoted audiences and the fans of good cinema. The viewers will have an opportunity to see the most prominent works of the genre and to take part in a special lecture delivered by Sergei Lavrentyev himself. The noted Russian film historian will provide a comprehensive picture of the development of Red Westerns and an analysis of their influence on the Soviet society. Lavrentyev has also promised to bring several surprises for the audience.

The Red Westerns are considered to have come to the history of cinema in the early 20th century when the silent adaptations of Jack London’s novels (Lev Kuleshov’s By the Law) were joined by the films about the Russian Civil War (Ivan Perestiani’s Little Red Devils) in which the Bolsheviks were victoriously fighting against the White Guard. The Russian film historian Sergei Lavrentyev maintains that “while in the American westerns settlers claimed new land and fought to create the American nation, in the Red Westerns people killed other people and fought to create a new Soviet nation”. Later, the White Guard was replaced by the Nazis, but the main theme of the films remained unchanged. The ‘cowboys’ of the Red Westerns were idealists fighting against the enemies of the nation and the state, while the American sheriff’s badge was replaced by a blood-red five-pointed star.

In his analysis, Lavrentyev provides the entire spectre of the ‘westerns’ of the Soviet cinematography. Piece by piece, he dismantles every symbol, character and movement of the camera in the film and presents the analysis in a relevant historical-political context. Throughout the decades of the Soviet superpower, the form and expression of the propaganda film underwent significant changes. They were especially changeable during the reign of the ‘Great Father of Nations’ subject to Stalin’s personal emotional fluctuations. According to Lavrentyev, “Soviet Red Westerns constitute a separate story with a magnificent beginning in the early 1920s and a sad ending in the late 1980s. It is a mirror reflecting the history of the Soviet Russian society and Soviet censorship in the 20th century”.

About the lecturer: Sergei Lavrentyev was born in 1954. He began his career in the 1970s as a theatre actor. After graduating from the prestigious Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, Lavrentyev joined Gosfilmfond – one of the biggest film archives in the world. During the period of Perestroika, he took up the analysis of previously banned works of cinematography and became known as the ‘New Wave’ critic of Soviet films. Lavrentyev wrote on the cinematography of Central and Eastern Europe. A number of his articles were published in such newspapers as The Soviet Screen, The Art of Film and Culture. His article The Never-ending Story (April 1987) marked the end of the Soviet censorship of foreign films intended for the public at large. At that time, he also appeared in the role of Einstein in a great film The Paper Eyes of Prishvin and played another role in an avant-garde film Concert for a Rat (1995). In 1990, Lavrentyev ran a highly popular TV show “Film Marathon” and remained dedicated to the century old art of cinematography. He is also a member the Russian National Film Academy. From 2002, he has a seat in the board of the Nika Award – the most prestigious Russian prize in the field of cinematography. Sergei Lavrentyev has written a book Clint Eastwood: Furious and Famous (2001). His new book Red Western was published in 2009.