Assa

Alika, a young nurse, arrives in Yalta on the Crimea’s Black Sea coast in the middle of winter, where she wants to spend time with her lover, the mafioso Krymov. There she meets a young musician named Bananan, who introduces her to the world of underground music and art. The rivalry between these two very different men and the collision between these very different words ushers in a dramatic conclusion. Sergei Solovyov’s epic blend of art film, genre cinema and musical is a singular work of Soviet cinema. Instead of following a linear narration, the film moves according to a sort of “Alice in Wonderland” dream logic, whereby strange characters and scenarios come and go and only the fantastical seems real. At the end of the film, young cult musician Viktor Tsoi turns the cinematic space into a stage: “Our hearts demand change!”, he demands in a song that became a hymn for Perestroika youth. The premiere at the start of April 1988, which was staged as a multimedia spectacle spanning several days, was a pioneering event that paved the way to the acceptance of underground culture within society. (nf/gv)