July Rain (1966): Ksenia Golubovich on Marlen Khutsiev’s Masterpiece

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• Ksenia Golubovich
• Thursday 11 December 2025, 18:30-20:00
• Online via zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ksenia Afonina.

Join us to celebrate the centenary of Marlen Khutsiev, a major figure of Soviet cinema, with cultural scholar Ksenia Golubovich, who will speak about one of his most acclaimed films, July Rain (1966).

Marlen Khutsiev (1925–2019) was a classic of Soviet film and a VGIK graduate who later headed its Department of Feature Film Directing. His best-known works include Spring on Zarechnaya Street, I Am Twenty, and July Rain. In 1966 he was among the signatories of the “Letter of the Twenty-Five” opposing the rehabilitation of Stalin.

July Rain is a landmark of 1960s Soviet cinema. Influenced by the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, it explores existential crisis, generational conflict, conformity, and the possibility of personal growth. Shot in a style that blends newsreel with fiction, the film offers a nuanced portrait of Soviet social life—its tensions, its silences—structured almost like a jazz composition. At its centre is a single moment: a woman’s quiet but decisive “no.”

When: Thursday, 11 December, 18:30-20:00 (GMT)

Language: English

Format: Online via Zoom

Tickets: £5 – Standard; free – CamRuSS Members, and Students

Access to the video recording is included with all ticket purchases

Video recording only: £5, free – CamRuSS Members

Please book here, https://shorturl.at/LbQ4u

Ksenia Golubovich is a writer, literary critic, translator, and cultural scholar. She holds a PhD in Philology, specialising in Shakespeare studies and English Modernism. She has translated works by W. B. Yeats, Bruce Chatwin, C. S. Peirce, and Dylan Thomas, and is the author of books on Olga Sedakova and Merab Mamardashvili. She has taught courses on literature, art, and cinema at the Moscow School of New Cinema and chaired the A. M. Pyatigorsky Prize for the Philosophical Essay.

Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marlen_Khutsiev_01.jpg

This talk is part of the The Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society (CamRuSS) series.

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• Online via zoom
• The Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society (CamRuSS)

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