OUTSKIRTS

You would never suppose OUTSKIRTS to be a product of the 1990s. Epochal black-and-white photography and a forward-march narrative hearken back to the best Soviet cinema of the 1930s, '40s, or 50s, and its mythic themes go back even further. The setting is the Urals, where a small but hardy band of farmers realize that their collective has been sold out from under them to a distant oil baron. Gathering provisions and crude weapons, a handful of the men set forth across the Steppes on an epic trek to learn who stole land their ancestors tended peacefully for a thousand years. You can see an entire culture etched in the craggy faces of the determined heroes and feel the weary wisdom, warrior strength, sublimely dry humor, and resilient spirit that has outlasted countless despots, czars, party hacks, and, now, free enterprisers as teh iconicized peasants relentlessly plod straight up through the 20th century to an incendiary congrontation. In fact, Russian producers and critics banned OUTSKIRTS from local theaters, fearful that it might spark real-life riots. Anticapitalist agit-prop or timeless morality play, the power of OUTSKIRTS cannot be doubted. (In Russian with English subtitles)