You are also invited to the screening of “Guppy”/ «Гупёшка» on Thursday, 23rd November, at 7pm, and to meet the CREATIVE TEAM of this exceptional film that was nominated in THREE BEST CATEGORIES:
- best film,
- best screen play and
- best actress
at the London Russian Film Festival this year! More details:
GUPPY (15+) / «ГУПЁШКА» (2017) – in Russian with English subtitles
Running time: 1h 19min
Thursday, 23rd November, 7pm
+ Q&As with the creative team: Vlad Furman, Nellie Popova, Vassiliy Sigarev, 8:25pm
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Hall, Trinity College, Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TQ (entrance – exactly opposite the Great Gate of Trinity)
Tickets: £8. Discount: £6 (CamRuSS members, students & OAPs)
(Please note: early-bird prices no longer apply – offer expired on Monday 20th November.)
Screenplay: Vlad Furman, Vassily Sigarev
Director: Vlad Furman
Starring: Nellie Popova, Mikhail Razumovsky, Yevgeny Baranov
Genre: maybe a comedy, maybe a tragedy…
Spectacular black-and-white cinematography, with a fast sequence of dazzling close-ups. Sensational cast.
A story that doesn’t “fit in a box”.
If you are fascinated by individual people – men and women, their roles and relationships, cravings and short-comings, if you are wondering about the nature of love and what forms it may take, if you wish to experience a small but vivid cross-section of life as it is – both funny and sore, and, most importantly, if you love great acting and stunning cinematography, then this film is for you!
“Guppy” is a nickname of the main heroine Tamara – it’s what her husband calls her, after the aquarium fish “guppy” that is able to survive even in the most extreme conditions…
Is this a typically Russian tale or is it pertinent for men and women of all lands and times? You watch and decide…
- Vassily Sigarev is perhaps the most fashionable and renowned of the contemporary Russian playwrights. His plays Plasticine, Black Milk and Ladybird were produced on the international stage – by the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, as well as in the USA. Following the success of Plasticine at the festival of young authors in the UK, Sigarev went on to win the London Evening Standard Award as the Most Promising Playwright (2002).
Tom Stoppard, handing the award to Sigarev, excitedly compared the young playwright to Dostoevsky: “If Dostoevsky were writing in the 21st century, no doubt he would have written Plasticine!”
Read more about Sigarev in New York Times.
- Vlad Furman is a highly praised, reflexive and innovative director, with a wealth of experience in theatre productions and a passion for exploring serious, multifaceted prose – such as his brilliant renderings of Gogol, Hugo, Saltykov and Goncharov.
- The cast is remarkable – with all the three characters so vastly different, conveying a complex bundle of human interactions in this highly charged, tense, often comic and occasionally unsettling story that unravels in a Russian flat.
- Nellie Popova’s breathtaking, subtly psychological and painfully convincing performance as Tamara has received an overwhelming acclaim. Nellie is a leading actress of the “Russian Ent
erprise” Theatre in St. Petersburg, who has starred in many complex and tremendously varied roles, in drama productions by Chekhov, Bulgakov, Somerset Maugham and others.
