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Tsypkin

Short documentary, 2004, 50 min.

Leonid Tsypkin was an obscure Russian writer until the American essayist and critic Susan Sontag coincidentally discovered his book Summer in Baden Baden. She considers it one of the most original works of the second half of the 20th century. She was touched by the story that links emotions and ideas that Fyodor Dostoevsky had in czarist Russia to the experiences Tsypkin has in the Soviet Union one hundred years later. Tsypkin was a Jew, which is why - under Brezhnev - he lost his job. But he was not granted an exit visa. In the eighties, his book was smuggled from Russia to America and in 1987 a small publishing house put it out in English. Tsypkin never witnessed the publication of his sole novel, as he died in 1985 at the age of 56. The documentary tells Tsypkin's tragic story by means of archive footage and feature film fragments about Dostoevsky's visit to Baden Baden and interviews with people such as Susan Sontag and Tsypkin's son, who did get an exit visa and currently lives in the US.

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Cinematographer - DoP

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