Pushkin House and the producers of Chekhov Bows & Leaves invite you to the first public table reading of the script of a new film by director Sandy Strallen.
Into what extraordinary landscapes and delicious imaginative journeys might we have accompanied Anton Pavlovich Chekhov?
Free, finally, from the daily concerns of chronic ill-health and unwanted fame and attention — whom would he have wanted the most to accompany him through his wildest, fevered imaginings?
Certainly his chief passions, among them Nature and Olga Leonardovna Knipper as well as a Peredvizhnik painter and great friend Isaak Levitan who was capable of dreaming up the perfect scenery for the utopian hereafter.
Assuredly his beloved Leo Tolstoy to help reset any wavering moral compasses.
Might he even conjure up Alexander Pushkin and a gypsy-punk band to sing him to eternal rest from the treetops in this garden of unearthly delights?
In the new film Anton Chekhov encounters many of his own immortal creations and characters amid his favourite gardens, on a glorious woodland walk with Olga Knipper. His journey is conditioned by his love for nature, for Olga and mundane pleasures, for writing and profound humanitarian thinking, for gardening and for his relentless pity and admiration for the human condition, even in the face of his own imminent death.
A series of magic-realist adventures are directed by Konstantin Stanislavski, performed by Olga Knipper and her fellow actors from The Moscow Art Theatre, with an additional cast of a thousand Siberian exiles who are willing to pose existential questions on the pressing issues of social justice for the leading lights of late 19th century thought.
The reading will be followed by an interrogation of the cinematic processes with which the filmmakers, animators and writers will bring the project to life in 2022.
The panel includes the writer/director and the actors, the Q&A will be moderated by Rosamund Bartlett, the renowned biographer of Chekhov, translator and writer.
For further information and to participate in the work in process of the production see Chekhov Bows & Leaves account: https://www.instagram.com/chekhov_bows_and_leaves/
Sandy Strallen
After a 30-year career as a professional director dancer and choreographer Sandy began curating dancefilm in 2007 and directed the London International Dancefilm Festival. He has gone on to make numerous films including “Dance Your PhD” (2017) with Dr Merritt Moore, and most recently “Written On Water “ (2020) with Pontus Lidberg.
Chekhov Bows & Leaves is his first full-length feature film as director.