Sentimental Grotesque

In the early 1920s Marc Chagall created a series of panels for the Goset, Moscow's avant-garde Jewish theater. SENTIMENTAL GROTESQUE uses these recently restored masterpieces as a starting point for exploring the work of Solomon Mikhoels, the brilliant actor-director for whom they were created. A thrilling narrative is crafted around the stories told by the lost panels. The extraordinary work of Mikhoels, who elevated Yiddish theater to a world-class form of expression, is brought to life. Includes interviews of Russian film scholar Maya Tarovskaya, who participated in the 10th anniversary (1990).

Director Marianna Tavrog graduated from the Philological Faculty of The Moscow State University and the Film Directors Faculty of The All- Union State Institute of Cinematography. For more than 40 years she has been working at the "Tsentrnayuchfilm" Studio. As a woman-director Tavrog is a rarity on the Russian film scene. Interested in popular-science cinema, Tavrog has created a cinema-chronicle of an entire generation, an anthology of Russian personalities, scientists, and artists on the screen. Her subjects / heroes / protagonists include Korney Chukovsky, Samuil Marshak, composer Aram Khachaturyan, Mikhail Svetlov, Gregor Mendel, mathematician Lobachevsky, physicist Igor Tamm, artists Vladimir Favorsky, Leonid Soyfertis, Tatyana Mavrina, Kukryniksy, Marc Chagall and Tyshler, as well as poets who did not return from the war: Pavel Kogan, Mikhail Kulchitsky, Vsevolod Bagritsky; the great masters of the stage: Igor llyinsky, Mark Prudkin, Faina Ranevskaya, Veriko Andzhaparidze, Sesiliya Takishvili. More than 40 films, more than 40 individual fates, and each life - an example to follow.