About this Event
Kino Perestroika: Cinema of the Soviet Borderlands
28 – 29 March 2026
£12 Day Pass / £10 Day Pass Concessions (Students, Under 18s, Unwaged and 65+)
Responding to and opening up Saodat Ismailova’s exhibition As We Fade, Kino Perestroika explores the post-Soviet borderlands using film as a guide to histories and counter-histories.
On Saturday, curator Daniel Bird presents a programme of poetic cinema from the Soviet heartlands to the Caucasus, with films from master filmmakers including Ali Khamraev and Sergei Parajanov. The day concludes with a performance with Bird and sound artist Elvin Brandhi which reworks outtakes from Parajanov’s dazzling Sayat Nova (The Colour of Pomegranates).
Focusing on the cinema of Central Asia during Perestroika, on the Sunday Saodat Ismailova introduces the cinema of Central Asia with three films from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan which add valuable context to the themes of her works — Swan Lake, 2025, in particular. Largely unseen by Western audiences and confined to archives since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the films have been newly digitised and made available for this event.
Day tickets are available for Saturday and Sunday separately. Attendees must be aged 18+.
Baltic Cinema is supported by Film Hub North with National Lottery funding on behalf of the BFI Film Audience Network.
Saturday 28 March
Perestroika and Poetry
11.00 | Man Follows Birds
Ali Khamraev USSR (Uzbekistan) 1975 85’
Written by the Tajik author Timur Zulfikarov, Man Follows Birds is a dazzling coming of age drama from the great Uzbek director Ali Khamraev.
13.00 |
Tengiz Abuladze USSR (Georgia) 1967 76’
Inspired by the poems of Vazha-Pshavela, Tengiz Abuladze’s The Plea remains one of the most visually arresting films of Georgian cinema.
15.00 | A Well for the Thirsty
Yuri Ilyenko USSR (Ukraine) 1965 70’
Banned for over twenty years, the surreal A Well for the Thirsty was the directing debut of Yuri Ilyenko, cinematographer of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and written by Ivan Drach.
17.00 | Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Sergei Parajanov USSR (Ukraine) 1965 97’
Based on the novel by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is a hallucinatory tale of doomed love set in the Carpathian Mountains of Western Ukraine.
Inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s debut film Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) was the flashpoint for a poetic cinema, inspired by folklore and symbolism, that flourished in Ukraine, the South Caucasus and Central Asia during the 1960s and 1970s.
20.00 | Performance You Are Fire: Sayat Nova Outtakes
Sergei Parajanov by way of Daniel Bird / Elvin Brandhi Armenia / UK 60’
Made up entirely of screen tests and outtakes from Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates, You Are Fire assembles a live score to uncensored scenes from Parajanov’s life of the 18th century poet, Sayat Nova.
Daniel Bird is an archivist, curator and writer, and a leading scholar on Eastern European cult cinema. He directs a film preservation and restoration project for films from the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Ukraine. As a curator, he has initiated numerous retrospectives, restorations, and expert commentaries for DVD releases, and is well-known as the biographer of Polish directors Walerian Borowczyk and Andrzej Żuławski.
Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend, Wales making auto-tune blast beats from field recordings, tapes, instruments and voice. Live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness.
Her first E.P Shelf Life was released on ‘C.A.N.V.A.S’ in 2018. She one half of father / daughter noise-improv berserkers Yeah You who released on Alter, Slip, Opal, Psychik Dancehall and Good Food. She also performs in collaborations such as ‘Bad@Maths’ who also released on Slip, ‘INSIN’ who released their first E.P ‘Sadsun’ on Hizz, and unreleased projects such as ‘Gailvn Keiln’, ‘OCDC’ and ‘0n est Malade’.
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Sunday 29 March
Central Asia, Soviet periphery
Saodat Ismailova presents three films central to both her own work – in particular Swan Lake, installed as part of her exhibition on Level 3 – and in different ways to an understanding of Central Asian cinema, and to the Soviet Union during Perestroika.
11.00 | Zikir
Dir. Shamil Japparov Kyrgyzstan 1992 41’
The collapse of the Soviet Union itself is encoded in Zikir, by Kyrgyz director Shamil Japparov, completed on the cusp of post-Soviet independence. Shamanic and Sufi tropes about healing were common at the time, largely because scientific methods were no longer working. The film’s documentary form, for this reason, is important.
13.00 | Meeting in Samara
Dir. Nazim Abbasov USSR (Uzbekistan) 1989 75’
Conjuring a sense of being lost and helpless, while at the same time a state of liberation, Nazim Abbasov’s film Meeting in Samara diverges from traditional expectations both thematically and in terms of some of its content, yet maintains a connection to the Quran.
15.00 | Talk
Daniel Bird, archivist, curator and writer, and a leading scholar on Eastern European cult cinema provides an overview of the weekend’s Soviet Cinema as selected by artist Saodat Ismailova. We plan to have Saodat Ismailova in conversation at this event, travel schedule permitting and will confirm this going ahead as soon as possible.
17.00 | Tornado (aka Whirlwind)
Dir. Bako Sadikov USSR (Tajikistan) 1988 98’
In Bako Sadikov’s Tornado (also translated as Whirlwind), a mysterious tribe of people who call themselves the Whirlwind roam the wasteland. Unlike others, they seek not food, clothing, or blood, but rather a meaning for their existence. The truth lies hidden beyond the horizon, somewhere in one of the world’s directions, toward which, in the end, the few survivors set out.
Bako Sadikov’s film screened as part of Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival in 1989. The only known copy in Western Europe has been lodged at the Cinémathèque Française ever since, which this scan has been made from.
Accessibility
We want our events to be inclusive and accessible. If you have any accessibility requests or questions, please email [email protected]. Ahead of your visit, you can find out about Baltic's facilities and accessibility here.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, South Shore Road, Gateshead, United Kingdom
GBP 11.29 to GBP 13.42
