Word: yevtushenko
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Yevtushenko directs his first film, flouting Soviet taboos as usual
...hour was Yevgeni Yevtushenko, the celebrated and some times controversial Soviet poet, and the occasion was the Moscow premiere of the first movie he has written and directed...
Titled Kindergarten, it recounts his child hood experiences during World War II, when he and thousands of other Moscow residents were evacuated to Siberia to escape advancing German troops. Although film portrayals of the U.S.S.R.'s World War II ordeal are encouraged by Soviet authorities, Yevtushenko's movie may run into difficulties nonetheless. One of two nude scenes, in which a newlywed wife is shown naked to the waist, drew gasps from the audience. Nudity is rare in Soviet films, usually being restricted by the censors. Kindergarten also includes a reverential portrayal of an aging rabbi that could...
...poet-film maker is prepared for trouble. "I feel some invisible enemy is working against my movie," says Yevtushenko, who at 50 still has the youthful exuberance that helped make him a literary pop star in the will keep my film from being seen around the country." Although Kindergarten was given preliminary approval for showing, a government agency must now decide whether it can be distributed throughout the Soviet Union and overseas. Yevtushenko insists he will make no cuts. "I won't change anything now," he says. "I will not give in to censorship. If you give one finger...
...veteran Yevtushenko watchers, such comments sound like the Angry Young Poet of old. During the Khrushchev era, Yevtushenko became a hero of liberal Soviet intellectuals for his bold poems condemning anti-Semitism (Babi Yar) and Stalin's reign of terror (The Heirs of Stalin), many of which he recited on poetry-reading tours of the West. Beginning in the late 1960s, Yevtushenko's dissident fire seemed to dim, as he churned out "official" verse celebrating Soviet workers and attacking...