The Fatal Look exhibition at Nizhny Novgorod

Our touring exhibition of Finnish silent cinema, The Fatal Look, has now arrived at Nizhny Novgorod, the fifth largest city of Russia, an important centre of industry, commerce, and culture.

The site is the spacious lobby of the number one art cinema of the city, Cinema Orlyonok ("The Young Eagle"), at the central pedestrian street Bolshaya Pokrovskaya 35 A, situated in a historical building designed by the great Friedrich Schechtel / Фёдор Осипович Шехтель, the master of Russian Art Nouveau and late Russian Revival. In the same address the first permanent cinema of the city, Cinema Palace, was opened in 1912.

This month's programme includes Alexei German's testament film Трудно быть богом / It's Hard to Be a God, Stephen Frears's Philomena, Jean-Marc Vallée's Dallas Buyers Club, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel - and a selection of shorts from Tampere Film Festival, and Finnish silent films.

There are over a hundred people at The Fatal Look reception and at the screening of Tampere shorts. There are four films by Hannes Vartiainen and Pekka Veikkolainen (Emergency Calls, 2013, Hanasaari A, 2009, Traces of Life, 2012, and The Death of an Insect, 2010), plus Jani Ilomäki's Ajatuksia kuolevaisuudesta / Thoughts of Mortality (2013). This is not a mainstream selection, but the audience is discerning, and this is a distinguished entry in the long-term cultural exchange between Tampere and its sister city Nizhny Novgorod, both cultural centers with a substantial industrial past.