Бежин луг (1968)
Bezhin Meadow: Sequences from an Unfinished Film
Bezhin Lug (Bezhin Meadow) was to be a Soviet film about a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest, and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. Assigned to Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, the filming followed the same path as with his previous effort, "Que Viva Mexico", into cost overrun and over-shooting of footage. Furthermore, Eisenstein's usage of forbidden experimental film techniques outraged his government superiors, who ordered the film destroyed before it was even completed. All that survives are the first and last frames of each shot, preserved by Sergei Eisenstein’s wife, Pera Atasheva. The 1967 reconstruction, by Naum Kleiman of the Eisenstein Museum and Sergei Yutkevich of Gosfilmofond, places these frames in order, approximating the original film.
Casting arrow_drop_down
as Stepok (as Vitya Kartashov)
as Samokhin, Stepok's Father
as Political Commissioner (as Pavel Ardzhanov)
as President of Kolkhoz
as Arsonist
as Peasant
as Boy
as
Crew arrow_drop_down
Writer
Story
Writer
Director
Writer
Sound
Archival Footage Coordinator
Supervising Editor
Editor
