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This film poster advertises Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie Andrei Rublev, about the famous Russian icon and fresco painter (c. 1360 – c. 1430) of that name. Tarkovsky’s film from 1966 portrays the artist as the embodiment of creativity and spirituality in times of cruelty and base materialism.
Vitshin, Andrei Rublev, 1988
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The poster references Milos Forman’s 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, featuring Jack Nicholson as a rebellious inmate of a mental institution where the patients are stripped of their agency by all means. A comparison with totalitarian repression seems obvious. Igor Maystrovsky, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1988
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USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (CCCP, in Cyrillic letters), is spelled out as part of the words reform (perestroika), openness (glasnost), acceleration, and democracy. At the bottom, the contour of the Kremlin tower is visible. The poster expresses the spirit of hope and expectation inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev’s political and economic reforms. V. Trubanov, USSR, 1989
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