UKRAINIAN CONCERT HALL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 767, 2 April 1954, Page 21

UKRAINIAN CONCERT HALL

(Kiev Film Studios) ‘THis determinedly cheery, tuneful (and at times beautiful) production has been heading an all-Russian bill dur-

ing the past week at Wellington’s "Continental Cinema." I’m told that the programme, complete with supports, is later to be shown in Auckland, Palmerston North, Christchurch and Dunedin, so I can perhaps draw attention to it for those who are prepared to listen to music and let the words go by. There is, in any case, a long ballet sequence which needs no translation, and the supporting films carry English commentaries. Ukrainian Concert Hall: recalls Big Top, the Soviet circus film shown here towards the end of last year, but it is not so long and by no means so exhausting to watch. It opens with an impressive male voice choir, moves on to a full-length ballet, an excerpt from a Russian comic opera (obviously comic, but difficult to follow without the book). and finally a stage performance of a gopak performed with enough vigour to_ make a dervish dizzy. The show is filmed in good colour, but with faitly straightforward stage settings and (as in Big, Top) no attempt to do more than present the various sequences as concert items. j , The supporting films included two presum--ably made for young Soviet Pioneers: ‘Forest Speedsters"-Aesop’s hare and tortuise with a_ new ideological slant (the tortoise had beccme two small bears) and a pictorial treatment that obviously stems from Disney--end ‘The Magic Seed,"’ a fairy tale with 2 Young Pioneer for a hero, However, the item which I enjoyed most was "The Glorious Sea," which isn’t about the sea at all, but about Lake Baikal in| Central Siberia. I ‘would recommead this to_ anyone interested in natural history, for Baikal has a fauna all its own, ‘and a good deal of it is shown here in full colour-the Baikal seals, | for example, and the trout-like omul which is | caught in vast numbers ‘n nets. The commentary | also points out proudly that the lake is the. deepest in the world. I was inclined to treat this as just another of those Russian inventions, | but according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (American edition at that) they’re not wrong. | they’se right. Baikal is not only, the deepest lake in the. world: (it holds about as much water as the Baltic and the Kattegat), it is. also the deepest crypto-depression on the earth’s surface. One of the few things ‘"The Glorious | Sea" omits to tell us about Baikal is that it is" frozen a yard thick all over from December to | May, but perhaps temperatures are low enough without getting into a deep freeze about what | is, in summer at least, an obviously beautiful and interesting place. ' Correspondence | Sir,-I should be grateful if you could give readers any information on the film of the 1952 Olympic Games at Helsinki. Before the Games, considerable publicity was given to the forthcoming production of the film. Amongst other things it was announced that Leni Riefenstahl, producer of the Berlin film in 1936, was to advise on its production. The cinema record of these Games promised therefore to be even better than the superb 1936 film. This latter film was shown several times in-New Zealand, as was, of course, that of the 1948 London Games. Will there be any prospect of our seeing the production from Helsinki? Our own New Zealand zoid medallist would nd doubt make the film of added

interest to us,

STUDENT

(Wellington).

(I have been unable to find any referenceseven with the help of international periodical indexes to a film of the Helsinki Games, and the only recent reference to Leni Riefenstah! seems to be a report dated April, 1952, relating to a court action which finally cleared her of the chagge of Nazism. She was quoted then as saying that she had only one wish-"to be left alone.’’ And that was just three months before the Helsinki meeting. Neither of the local well-informed circles to whom I usually turn for help on more recondite film queries could help me either, though, according to one, *§t would be safe to say that no feature-length film of the 1952 Games has been brought into New Zealand for commercial exhibition.’’Jno.) |