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Baboesjka

Short documentary, 2002, 30 min.

Sober video portrait of the very old, but extremely vital Nadezhda Semyonovna Rumyantseva, an actress who was already performing on stage in the early Soviet period. Director and her grandson Leonid Vlasov films his grandmother in the 87th and 93rd year of her life. Without mincing her words, granny (babushka) Rumyantseva tells about the pre-Bolshevistic era, her old loves and drama school and alternates her outpourings with long and minute recitations from plays she was in. The abundant vodka is very helpful in this process. Babushka's vitality contrasts sharply with the images of the seriously pauperised and wasted Russian countryside that Vlasov adds to the portrait. Perhaps, these explain why babushka, at her advanced age, lets slip the remark that she still does not know what the meaning of human life is.

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