a man and a woman soaking wet in ancient dress laugh hystericallyalr

Siberian Lady Macbeth
(Sibirska ledi Magbet)

Introduction by Tatiana Kuzmic
Screening on Film
Directed by Andrzej Wajda.
With Olivera Marković, Ljuba Tadić, Bojan Stupica.
Yugoslavia, 1962, 35mm, black & white, 94 min.
BCMS with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA

In the 1960s, Polish director Andrzej Wajda made two features in Yugoslavia; he was supremely unhappy with both. The first of these, Siberian Lady Macbeth (translated for American distribution as Fury Is a Woman), is an ascetic adaptation of Nikolai Leskov’s novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1865), itself of course a remix of Shakespeare, as well as of Turgenev’s 1848 short story Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District. Wajda’s motivation for roaming south was pragmatic: “This was a film I had wanted to make in Poland, but in Poland we could make everything into a film except Russian literature, which was entirely reserved for Soviet directors … Polish cinema didn’t agree to the film, whereas in Yugoslavia at that time the Russian tradition was very strong.” Produced inexpensively by the Belgrade studio Avala with a local crew and celebrity cast, the result was a self-proclaimed failure on par with Gates to Paradise (1968), Wajda’s other Yugoslav “disaster.” After Sibirska ledi’s subpar reception, the auteur blamed himself for inadequately visualizing Leskov’s serial logic: “It was my fault. The entire film was meant to be a grim, endless procession of exiles among whom would be the heroes recalling their tragic fates. I rejected this idea even though it would have made a better and more interesting film … As it turns out, I am not satisfied. The film was neither Russian nor Polish nor Yugoslav, but something that had stopped in between.” Three elements, however, stood out to Wajda as satisfactory: Aca Sekulović’s “wonderful photography,” Ljuba Tadić performing as Sergei, and the set decorations by Miomir Denić. “The film made me realize how difficult it is to adjust to a new and foreign reality. I understood that a little freedom abroad was not enough: I needed more freedom at home, in Poland.”

PRECEDED BY

  • Stone Sleeper (Kameni spavač)

    Directed by Bakir Tanović.
    Yugoslavia, 1969, 35mm, color, 11 min.
    BCMS with English subtitles.
    Print source: HFA

Sarajevo filmmaker Bakir Tanović’s poetic, ethereal rumination on tombstones, spirit and landscape features the lyricism of acclaimed Bosnian poet Mak Dizdar. With thanks to Filmski Centar Sarajevo.


With thanks to Filmski Centar Sarajevo.

Tatiana Kuzmic is Preceptor in Slavic Languages and Literatures (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian language program) at Harvard and author of Adulterous Nations: Family Politics and National Anxiety in the European Novel (Northwestern University Press, 2016).

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