The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
Nobody Wanted to Die
When
Wed 20 Dec 2023
This cult “red” Lithuanian western is both a partial reworking of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and a complex accounting for the legacy of Sovietisation and World War II. In 1947, a small farming community is torn between allegiances to the Soviet Union and its Partisan “brothers in the woods” after the village council’s chairman is murdered. Brilliantly shot by Jonas Gricius (Kozintsev’s Hamlet and King Lear), this heightened pro- and anti-Soviet drama draws intriguing comparisons with the McCarthyist Hollywood westerns of the 1950s and is directed by one of Lithuanian cinema’s most celebrated figures.
Digital print courtesy of the Lithuanian Film Centre.
Also screening on Wed 20 December
Program
Ostern Powers: An introduction to the Eastern European Western
Aferim! (2015) – Wed 6 Dec, 7pm
The Wind Blows Under Your Feet (1976) – Wed 6 Dec, 9.30pm
Western (2017) – Wed 13 Dec, 7pm
The Sons of Great Bear (1966) – Wed 13 Dec, 9.35pm
Nobody Wanted to Die (1965) – Wed 20 Dec, 7pm
Lemonade Joe (1964) – Wed 20 Dec, 9pm
About the program
It may come as a surprise, but that most quintessentially American genre, the western, was enormously popular behind the Iron Curtain. Of course, it was seldom possible for Eastern Bloc audiences to see Hollywood films. No matter; even though socialist states deemed the Hollywood western decadent in propagating foundational frontier myths, they took to the production of westerns with great relish...
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
