Ed. Note: There is an undercurrent of Russian film that is totally unfamiliar to most viewers, awaiting rediscovery. Eugene Vasiliev describes the “cine-samizdat” movement of Parallel Cinema, which subverted the official Soviet Union aesthetic of Socialist Realism. Although these films were made in the underground and still have not been officially released (at least, not in the Western world), copies of several of them can be found through a YouTube search.
Eugene’s latest project is the English-language YouTube channel “Cinema for the End of Time“.
Parallel or “perpendicular” cinema was an elusive star that slipped away from the mainstream of Soviet movies. It shone through the tattered veil of the cultural climate, defiantly refusing to bow before the crushing weight of conventional Soviet film production. It was the cinematic equivalent of a secret society, existing just beyond the reach of those willing to conform. Yevgeny Yufit, Pyotyr Pospelov, the Aleynikov brothers, and Boris Yukhanov were major figures: each one a true alchemist of surrealism, conjuring images as if plucking them from the depths of some kaleidoscopic, psychedelic dream.
At the heart of parallel cinema is a movement known as Necrorealism.
NECROREALISM
It’s the early 1980s in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and a little film movement is scooting away from the mainstream, bubbling up from the gooey underbelly of Soviet cinema like an old, ratty corpse. Welcome to necrorealism. Don’t let the name fool you—it’s not some low-key meditation on life’s fleeting nature. No, no. This is shockingly avant-garde cinema. Death here is not the poetic “life is but a dream” kind of death, but rather the “let’s zoom in on the slow decay of the human form and blurt out how messed up it all is” kind of death.
Necrorealism was cinema that aimed to rip away the rose-colored glasses we wear when thinking about life and death to show us the grimy, decaying truth underneath. So, who’s behind this snide brand of films? The main authors are Evgeniy Yufit, Andrei Kurmoyartsev, and Konstantin Mitenev. These guys weren’t just making weird films; they were practically twisting the very idea of cinema into a grotesque, feisty art project. If you walked into a necrorealist film expecting a feel-good drama, you’d leave questioning your life choices and maybe even your grip on reality. These films weren’t designed to uplift. Instead, they said, “Death and decay? Let’s make it a fun, twisted art project.”
Papa, Ded Moroz is Dead [i] (1984) is one of the most offbeat features of the necrorealist movement, far away from anything remotely resembling conventional cinema. It is loosely based on A.K. Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vampire.” Picture this: an old man and a kid, grinning in a dark, ratty basement, set traps as they hunt for a victim. Meanwhile, a biologist shows up in a nearby village to study—wait for it—burrowing shrews. But the villagers, clearly more into dark, creepy rituals than animal science, take him prisoner and turn his life into a bizarre, sadistic game. After dinner comes the reckoning.
Yufit isn’t exactly here to hold your hand. He forces you to peek into the twisted ugliness of life’s fragility. Death, in his films, isn’t some “finality”—it’s more like that bad friend who keeps showing up uninvited to your birthday party, grinning awkwardly until you finally cave in and let them eat your cake.
If you thought Ded Moroz is Dead was bizarre, get ready for the short The Lumberjack (1985). This film takes you on a journey where death is hilarious, but in an “I can’t look away” manner. The characters are stuck in a loop of decay and violence that almost seems… normal to them. Imagine waking up every day, knowing you’re going to get into a weird fight with your neighbor over whose turn it is to cut down the next tree—and then realizing you’ve been fighting about it for years. Yufit not only plays with grotesque imagery; he gets philosophical about it. Death here isn’t the punchline to some morbid joke. It’s an inevitable force, yes, but it’s also the absurd center of everything.
The short Sanitarians-Werewolves [AKA Werewolf Orderlies] (1985) takes things even further into the absurd. The film feels like Yufit took all the morbidness of necrorealism and dumped it into a blender. This isn’t a “werewolf horror movie”—nope, this is more like if werewolves were also government bureaucrats, who wore khakis and had a weird fascination with taxidermy. You won’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just leave the room feeling uncomfortable, and that’s kind of the point.
Straight Walking isn’t just about a guy walking across the street. It’s about a scientist obsessed with human evolution, who uncovers—wait for it—an alternate theory on bipedalism that’s, well, weirder than you might think. The journey to understand the origins of human walking turns into a crazy spiral into madness, complete with strange rituals and violent outbursts.
So, what was necrorealism really about (besides making you feel like you should probably cancel all your future movie plans)? It’s about making you face the absurdity of death. Yufit and his comrades weren’t just trying to gross you out—they were trying to get you to question why we think of life and death as opposites. In the world of necrorealism, life and death are best buds. They hang out, share a beer, and gossip about their latest existential crisis.
OTHER TRENDS IN PARALLEL CINEMA
The Aleynikov brothers are a different piece of cake. These rebellious Moscow magicians crafted something both revolting and mesmerizing, drawing deeply from the well of socialist art. Their works were, in a sense, a punk rock symphony set to the Soviet industrial aesthetic, with an unapologetic rawness that simultaneously repelled and fascinated.
Igor Aleynikov was a true cinephile, emerging from the depths of Grozny to make his mark in the far, distorted corners of Soviet cinema. He wasn’t just a director; he was a crusader for nonconformist art, the mastermind behind Parallel Cinema. A quirky visionary, Aleynikov single-handedly reshaped Soviet film, snagging viewers with his unique spin on reality and absurdity. I particularly enjoy his 1992 feature film Traktorists-2 [Tractor Drivers 2], a parody of the 1939 propaganda film The Tractor Drivers. The plot: Klim Yarko returns from the army, hoping to settle down as a tractor driver in peaceful civilian life. He faces a choice: on one side, there’s a prosperous collective farm, where the fashionable Maryana Bazhan works. The aging Nazar fiercely contests her heart, but her father, the farm’s chairman, clearly favors Klim. On the other side lies a bankrupt collective farm, where the residents have formed an anarchist gang and terrorize their wealthy neighbors. And, as one might expect, the battle doesn’t come without casualties. The film reels from escalating tensions, creating a jigsaw of competing interests. And, as one might expect, the battle doesn’t come without casualties. Yarko is caught between two forces, neither of which he can fully control.
Few films capture the haunting atmosphere of an industrial city as powerfully as the Aleynikov’s 10-minute The Cruel Disease of Men (1987). Scenes from Chapaev, Stalin’s favorite movie, and official Soviet newsreels—featuring pioneers, factories, airplanes, and Cossacks—intertwine with the gritty, industrial landscape of Moscow in the late ’80s. The story follows a silent, melancholic hero (played by journalist, director, and editor of “The First Almanac of Parallel Cinema”, Pyotr Pospelov), brutally assaulted by a well-dressed man in an empty subway car. Filming in the subway without permission (which was nearly impossible to get) was a criminal offense back then, not to mention the taboo subject matter.
In Revolutionary Etude (1987), the directors compared their comrades, including Kondratiev, to the early communists, placing them—sporting goofy glasses and swimming masks—into the rhetoric of utopian socialism. The visual sequence, paired with an incongruent soundtrack, created a new “meta-reality” that drained the myth of its meaning. The disorienting, quirky combination of image and sound was designed to challenge the viewer’s expectations and poke fun at the very idea of Soviet idealism.
Later, this challenge would be too much for another key Leningrad conceptual director, Maxim Pezhemsky. In the expressive short The Journey of Comrade Chkalov Across the North Pole (1990), an ironic reinterpretation of the 1941 Mikhail Kalatozov film Valery Chkalov, the director plays the Soviet aviation hero as dumb and clumsy, but he would stumble over the powerful, exalted original footage.
The essence of Parallel Cinema is the inversion of myths. Soviet socialist icons like the tractor, once symbols of power, are mocked, and revolutionaries, burdened with great tasks, turn into helpless clowns, stripping them of their historical grandeur. In these films, chaotic montages of old clips dismantle symbols, leaving us both laughing and recoiling in pain.
[i] Ded Moroz (sometimes translated as “Father Frost”) is a legendary figure similar to Father Christmas or Santa Claus.