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Oscar Qualifying Run of Award-Winning Feature Doc ‘Oleg’ at Regency Agoura Hills Stadium 8 — Nov. 4 - Nov. 10Interview with the Director Nadia TassOleg, an award-winning documentary feature about the quest for freedom by a famous Soviet Russian cinema heartthrob Oleg Vidov, from award-winning Australian director Nadia Tass. Produced by Joan Borsten, the doc’s narration is provided by Emmy-Award winner Brian Cox (‘Succession’) and Russian-born actor Costa Ronin (‘Homeland’, ‘The Americans’).

Oleg will have an exclusive week-long FYC award-qualifying run at the Regency Agoura Hills Stadium 8 cinema from November 4 to November 10. For tickets and screening times: https://bit.ly/OlegFYCTix.

Trailer Link: https://bit.ly/OlegTrailer

Official Movie Site: www.olegvidovfilm.com

‘Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Story’ premiered in April 2021 at the Moscow International Film Festival, the spiritual home of this great actor, once called the Robert Redford of the Ussr. The 95-minute documentary which memorializes his rise to fame, his ill-fated marriage into the inner circles of the Brezhnev family, and his desperate escape to the West by illegally crossing a border was directed by Nadia Tass and produced by Joan Borsten.

The producer Joan Borsten, Oleg’s widow, once a prominent American journalist who reported for the Los Angeles Times and the Jerusalem Post before becoming a producer, spent almost three years bringing this intense documentary to the screen.

Directed by Nadia Tass, one of Australia’s most prominent directors (Amy, Malcolm, Matching Jack) who also served as executive producer and about whom Joan says,

I chose Nadia Tass to direct not only because she has helmed so many award-winning films, or because she knew Oleg personally but because she had one foot in each world; her own grandparents escaped from the Bolshevik Revolution to Greece and raised her reciting Russian poetry and acting out Russian plays. These factors gave her the sensitivity to carve out of Oleg’s big life a compelling story about one man’s search for freedom.

And in fact, neither the Ussr nor Russia were enigmas to any of the key team I assembled to make the documentary. For none of them was there a massive learning curve when it came to an inscrutable country which threatened western civilization for 70 years and then unexpectedly collapsed. Italy’s Andrea Guerra (‘Hotel Rwanda’) who composed the original music, the editor, Leonard Feinstein (‘Darfur Now’), and the writer/editor, the late Cory Taylor(‘JFK: A President Betrayed’) all share some connection to Russia, as do the narrator Brian Cox and Costa Ronin, the voice of Oleg.

Nadia Tass

Interviewing Nadia Tass in Melbourne, Australia gives insight into this doc as well as into her own directing methods which were honed in the newest fashion as she shot long distance using the latest technology during the time of Covid.

You have directed 18 projects (film, TV movies and one short) since your breakout film Malcolm in 1986 but never before a documentary. How was it shooting a doc?

I started a American doc about water called Bottle This. We are still working on it but when the producer’s husband fell ill, we put it on hold. But really my first doc was Oleg.

It is quite different creating the narrative but it was very exciting because the material for the narrative as already there. We had interviewed many people around the world from so many different cultures. It was like fitting pieces of a puzzle together.

The actual techniques and my sense of narrative and visual storytelling that I have developed over the years were quite useful.

Very visually exciting was the shot of the car at the Yugoslavian border.

The difficulty was Covid. For instance, I could not actually go to the Yugoslavian border to shoot. It was really tough to be in Australia, working in my room during lockdown. I had to rely on technology, playmaker, Zoom, Skype to communicate with my crew in Slovenia.

Even the casting, wardrobe and of course looking at the footage was reliant on technology. In interviews online, I found crew in appropriate countries.

I had three cameras going at the same time and three screens around me plus Skype to stay close to the first assistant director who was there. It was very complicated. Covid has truncated so many areas and also has opened up other channels of communication.

Having worked as a director for a long time however, I was able to use that knowledge and that is what is in the film.

How was it working the the producer, Joan Borsten?

I would cross the world to work wth her again. She was such a leader and at the same time a great collaborator.

Were you drawn to this project because of Oleg?

Partially the privilege of knowing Oleg attracted me to it, but also I was drawn to the human being being so persecuted.

Can you speak more about your connection to the man, Oleg himself?

Historically our heritage is Russian. Part of my father’s side was from Russia and I always wanted to be connected but it was very, very far away. The connective tissue between me and Oleg was art and culture. As a very young child I wanted to direct and to know about theater, TV and movies, how to communicate through them. The visual arts also always attracted me. That was a part of my heritage. Oleg and I, and sometimes Joan when when she was around, would talk about our mutual love for the Russian culture and I am still so grateful for our being connected by that.

And today?

I am appalled absolutely appalled with the system there and the way that system treats people in Russia. It is the very thing that drove Oleg out of there. It hasn’t changed. Putin is yet another autocrat who with his megalomania has become completely evil. Oleg had to escape for his life because of the poltical system.

I would love to see the world supporting Ukraine and to put an end to this megalomaniac’s actions destroying so many peoples’ lives.

Would you work on a doc again?

Absolutely! I need to choose carefully. I must be in love with the iea. Like with Bottle This, I fell in love with water. It is a right of every human being to have water, and there are so many people who are deprived of this rights. I feel really passionate in my connection to that!

I notice in IMDb that since 2020 you seem to have a lot of films going, starting with the short Isolation Restaurant, going on to Oleg and now The Amazing Mr. Z and Feather.

Yes, and I have just been offered a film in Norway — and I don’t even have to go there. Technology avails me of it. In Italy, The Curfew is in pre pre-production and will shoot in the spring.

David Parker, my partner in Cascade here in Australia and I have three project we are now lining up.

I am also meeting on theater again (my big passion)…two plays, written in America that i am very passionate about are waiting on scheduling. Theater has just come back in the last four months and there is a backlog.

I love waking up to a full day of talking, negotiating, developing and planning projects!

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Celebrated as one of the Soviet Union’s biggest movie stars, no amount of fame could save Oleg Vidov from a system that tried to control his life. Born in Moscow during World War II, the film traces Oleg’s spectacular rise to stardom in the Ussr and his three decades in Hollywood as an actor and producer following his defection from the Soviet Union. The film also documents the hidden side of the prolific Soviet film industry and gives a rare, first-hand look at the privilege and corruption of the Soviet Communist regime.

Oleg managed to escape to the west in 1985, receiving immediate political asylum from the US Embassy in Rome. Once in Hollywood, Oleg turned to reinventing himself. He continued his film career starring in such films as Red Heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wild Orchid with Mickey Rourke and Thirteen Days with Kevin Costner. Sadly, Oleg passed unexpectedly in May 2017.

‘Red Heat’ with Arnold Schwarzenegger

To read more about Joan Borsten and Oleg Vidov, click here.

Oleg Vidov, a box-office star in the Soviet Union who defected to the U.S. and appeared in Red Heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Wild Orchid opposite Mickey Rourke, has died. He was 73.

Vidov died Monday from cancer-related complications in Westlake Village, Calif., his friend Kathy Jura announced.

Born in Filimonki on the outskirts of Moscow, Vidov was the son of a schoolteacher and a Finance Ministry deputy. He graduated from the acting and directing departments of Vgik, the Ussr's acclaimed film school, and appeared in several features in his native land, including The Headless Horseman (1972).

Although Soviet actors...

Oscar-winning Danish director of Babette's Feast

In April 1988, a week before his 70th birthday, the film director Gabriel Axel, who has died aged 95, walked up on stage at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles to receive the best foreign language film Oscar for Babette's Feast (1987), the first Danish movie to achieve that honour. In a mixture of Danish and French, the slim, grey-bearded, bespectacled Axel quoted a line from the character of the General in the film: "Because of this evening, I have learned, my dear, that in this beautiful world of ours, all things are possible."

It was the pinnacle of Axel's long career and marked the beginning of a resurgence of Danish cinema. (Another Danish film, Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror, won the foreign language Oscar the following year.) Despite several fine films, there was previously little in Axel's oeuvre to predict the perfection of Babette's Feast.

The first day of the Havana Film Festival I was at the Hotel Nacional, registering for the festival, seeing familiar faces from Cuba and the Caribbean and old friends from the USA: Oleg Vidov and his wife Joan Borsten were there as Oleg who had starred in 3 Soviet films made in Cuba was an honored guest. Havana regulars were there: Marlene Dermer, director of Laliff and Laurie Anne Schag, VP of International Documentary Association. Laurie Anne not only gives tours of Cuba with her colleague Geo Darder, but this year she also screened her film at the festival, the documentary Oshun’s 11 about a tour of the Yoruba Orisha religion in Cuba.

Harlan Jacobson of Talk Cinema and Sarah Miller brought in tours as well and we went together to the Acapulco theater to see the Puerto Rican romantic heist movie Hope, Despair (La Espera Desespera) by writer/ director Coraly Santaliz Perez (♀) . Im Global’s Bonnie Voland the VP of Marketing was there with with Stuart Ford and his friend. Bonnie gave a great presentation on marketing which I will report on in these pages soon. Im Global and Mundial, their their new joint venture with Gael Garcia Bernal, showed The Butler and Bolivar: The Liberator. This new Mundial title was oddly programmed at the same time as the Venezuelan version of the exact same story, Bolivar, el hombre de las dificultades by Luis Alberto Lamata, a Venezuelan-Cuban-Spanish co-production. I wonder if both cinemas were packed or if one was more popular than the other. Publicity and marketing at this festival is a strange and unknown process, though I know Caroline Libresco-produced and Grace Lee-directed American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs brought in audience after a radio interview with Caroline and Grace had aired.

Ruby Rich was also here giving a very interesting presentation on Queer Cinema whose historical roots (Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman) were mostly unknown to the young Cuban audience. She is an old hand in Havana, having attended the festival in the heady days of the 1970s. The theme of homosexuality was prevalent in many of the films this year. A government Institute of Human Sexuality has been established under the leadership of the daughter of Raul Castro, and Cuba has apologized for its past treatment of homosexuality. This reversal has opened the doors of freedom. Filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet, the writer of Soy Cuba, the great Russian-Cuban epic, used to have to work underground with his personal homosexual films (After his fame was established with La Bella del Alhambra he was “allowed” to work underground). He is now able to be officially accepted with his works like Verde, Verde which showed in the Festival. Venezuelan Miguel Ferrari’s Azul y no tan rosa was feted for his treatment of this little-discussed issues in his home country.

Enrique Pineda Barnet’s meditation on what it means to be gay in Havana (Verde, Verde) marks his first film in years to be accepted into the official festival.

The U.S. invitees who give workshops here and at the international film school Eictv makes me wonder who is making the connections and how. Last year Hawk Koch and Annette Benning were here and created a support mechanism of AMPAS with the festival. This year, aside from Oleg Vidov Bonnie Voland and Ruby Rich, other American invitees giving workshops included Robert Kraft (Avatar, Titanic, Moulin Rouge) on film music was obviously brought in by the Academy. Mike S. Ryan, an independent filmmaker from New York was the big surprise as we never knew his role as producer of such films as Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and Life During Wartime, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Ira Sach’s Forty Shades of Blue, Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim and many more including Liberty Kid, the winner of HBO’s Latino Film Festival 2007 and Bela Tarr’s final film, The Turin Horse. His newly finished film is Last Weekend starring Patricia Clarkson and Zachary Booth. This Independent Spirit “Producer of the Year” winner was here working with filmmakers at Eictv, the international film school and also did a presentation in the festival conference series.

Im Global’s Stuart Ford and friend with Bonnie Voland at the Hotel Nacional

Oliver Stone, a favorite of Cuba since his HBO films Comandante and Persona Non Grata, brought in a History Channel doc series called The Untold History of the United States, made up basically of interviews with key people in the eras of World War II: Roosevelt, Truman and Wallace [sic],The Bomb, Cold War: Truman, Wallace [sic], Stalin, Churchill and the Bomb, The 1950s: Eisenhower, The Bomb and The Third World.

A fruit vendor on our walk to the Infanta Theater

Laurie Anne Schag secured radio promotion for Caroline Libresco of Sundance Institute and Grace Lee, here as a producer and director to show their new film: American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. The audience at the Infanta Theater was mainly brought in by the radio show but also included us, the friends, and the Trinidad + Tobago delegation. The Q&A sessions were informed and informative as the Cubans and Americans discussed the notion of Revolution as put forward by Grace Lee Boggs a 90+ year old community organizer who came out of Barnard College in the 40s to Detroit and has never abandoned her Marxist Socialist standards but recognizes that social revolution can only succeed if the people themselves are revolutionized from grassroots action and within the individuals carrying out the action. Without transformation from within, action to change the government is only a rebellion. So what about the Cuban Revolution? The discussions were very enlightening and the audience felt that this film was new and interesting.

I attended the first of four screenings of Caribbean films hosted by ttff (Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival) at the Infanta Theater. My readers know from my blogs of last November how astonished and moved I was by the population makeup of Trinidad + Tobago and of the Caribbean in general. This area of small islands, formerly colonized by Spanish, French, German and Dutch has created a particular island culture society whose film culture is taking the next evolutionary step. Forming a marketplace and a place of cultural exchange among its constituents, ttff’s director Bruce Paddington is working with Cuba’s national film organization, Icaic’s Luis Notario to develop a real film market for Caribbean film. Apropos, Bruce was also showing his documentary on the Revolution in Grenada, called Foreward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution, which was the motto of Maurice Bishop the elected president who was forcefully removed and murdered by the opposition when the U.S. army under the Commander-in-Chief, President Ronald Reagan sent in forces presumably to protect the American medical students attending medical school there in 1983.

Twenty-five Cubans were also killed in the fighting which ensued on this otherwise always peaceful island where now a reconciliation among neighbors is still in process.

The other four screenings of ttff were varied and interesting in their unique Caribbean points of view. The opening film, Poetry is an Island: Derek Walcott was a portrait of the St. Lucia poet and Nobel Prize winner for literature. The short film, Passage, by Kareem Mortimer, a filmmaker I have known for many years from the Bahamas and Trinidad, was astounding in its recall of one of the most degrading aspects of the slave trade, as black Haitians huddled in the tiny hold of a decrepit fishing boat as they were smuggled into Florida from Haiti. Another short, Auntie, from the Barbados by Lisa Harewood told of a current social issue in which “Aunts” take care of young children while their single mothers go abroad to earn money for their care. As the child in this movie reaches her teen years, her mother sends for her which leaves a grieving single woman “Auntie” alone with no thanks and no child to care for in her older years. Other shorts included The Gardener by Jo Henriquez from Aruba and One Good Deed by Juliette McCawley from Trinidad + Tobago.

The window on Caribbean issues was opened wide. The Barbados comedy Payday in which two friends decide to leave their job as security guards and open their own business was made on a shoe string but gave a picture of how the youth are living today with ganga, grinding dancing, sexy encounters told with a sweet mischievous naughtiness. Songs of Redemption, by Miquel Galofre and Amanda Sans, winner of ttff’s Jury Prize and the Audience Award goes inside what had been Kingston Jamaica’s worst prison until the new prison director introduced classes to educate the prisoners, including a music rehabilition program which goes beyond all expectation… Truly redeeming.

Trinidad + Tobago filmmakers Karim Mortimer from Bahamas, Lisa Harewood from Barbaddos, Alex (Egyptian/ Austrian / Bahamanian business partner of Karim, Shakira Bourne

The film program was suspended for a full day in which all cultural and entertainment events throughout Cuba were cancelled to observe a national day of mourning for Nelson Mandela.

We salute our dear friends of many years Oleg and Joan on Oleg's birthday. He is one of the major figures in world cinema and is involved now in an exciting documentary on Tarkovsky, the great Russian director.

Oleg Vidov, known as the Russian Robert Redford, celebrated his 70th birthday last week in Moscow during a primetime TV special on Russia's First Channel, hosted by Andrei Malakhov.   He has appeared in 50 films since 1961, some of them the most popular Soviet films ever made.  They are still regularly broadcast on Russian television today. His U.S. credits include "Red Heat," "Wild Orchid," and "Thirteen Days."

Oleg now lives in Malibu with Joan Borsten, his wife of 28 years. They met in Rome in 1985, when he defected, the first major Soviet actor ever to leave the Ussr for the United States.  At that time Joan was writing for the La Times entertainment section. They were introduced by Richard Harrison, an American actor living and working in Rome (with over 120 film credits to his name) who personally took Oleg to the Us Embassy to apply for political asylum.  28 years later, Richard and Francesca, now Malibu residents, hosted Oleg's U.S. birthday celebration.

Even at 70, there is no rest for Oleg as his current film is being the voice of the revered Russian Director Andrei Tarkovsky in a documentary called Time Within Time, based on Tarkovsky's diary, and directed by Pj Letofsky. Tarkovsky (1932-1986) is one of the top 10 Directors of all time (IMDb.com), and #1 in Russia.

Tarkovsky was the first person Oleg called when he himself arrived in Rome in 1985. Tarkovsky had defected 2 years earlier and was living in Italy. Pj approached Oleg early on to be the 'voice' for the project, but didn't know the extent of Oleg's relationship with Tarkovsky. Although they had different roles in the Soviet film world, they knew each other, and Oleg was mentioned  in the diary.

Pj said, 'When we started recording the narration, it was immediately obvious that this was very personal for Oleg. He knew all the  people in the diary, and all the struggles working in that system. We would take breaks during the recording and you could see Oleg going back in his mind, telling me stories how he planned his escape from the Soviet Union'...

Time Within Time is a very compelling story of its day- of international film, art, politics with a real life cast of characters including Michaelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, Andrei Konchalovsky, Ingmar Bergman, to name a few. 

'By using Tarkovsky's diary, his words, it's almost like he wrote the script for me' says Letofsky.

Tarkovsky- Time Within Time is in the finishing stages. For more information visit www.newcastleproductions.com or contact Pj Letofsky at pjletofsky[a]gmail.com...

An interesting Us - Russia documentary co-production on one of our best and least known international filmmakers - Tarkovsky - is underway and raising funds. U.S. documentarian Pj Letovsky has teamed with, among others, Russian superstar Oleg Vidov to produce this long needed work via Kickstarter.

Kickstarter has been become a go to fundraising tool for indie filmmakers that has recently gained attention for their multi million dollar campaigns for Robert Thomas’ ‘Veronica Mars Movie Project’ $5.7 million, and Zach Braff’s ‘Wish I Was Here’ campaign that netted $3.1 million. 10% of the films at Sundance are Kickstarter funded, and 2 movies have been nominated for an Oscar; 63 Kickstarter funded films opened on in theaters and Kickstarter has 80 Million unique views each month.

Since it’s inception in 2009, Kickstarter has launched 26,759 Film and Video projects, with 10,354 being successful (40% rate) and collecting $120 million for their projects (they also have categories for Music, Games, Art, Photography, etc).

Pj Letofsky is directing/ producing a film on the Russian auteur director Andrei Tarkovsky called Time Within Time, that is based his diary. He has some pretty prestigious names associated with the project- Oleg Vidov (the Russian Robert Redford), Director Andrei Konchalovsky, Tonino Guerra (Fellini, Antonioni, and Tarkovsky’s screenwriter), Katinka Farago (Bergman’s Production mananger for 30 years). Letofsky tried the traditional methods of trying to find co-production partners in the Us, Italy, France, UK, and Russia, and after limited success (and having decided to go into production) he is now trying a Kickstarter campaign- going directly to Tarkovsky fans around the world- to raise the final 20% of the budget to finish his film.

‘Tarkovsky is relatively unknown in the West, but he is such an important, and influential filmmaker in world cinema, that I have to do everything I can to complete this film’ says Letofsky. ‘We are using Kickstarter, and its reach thru social media- Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Blogs- to connect to our niche audience. I’m also looking at it as a ‘pre-marketing campaign’ to build relationships with people who can help when the film is finished. I’ve been getting pledges from Tarkovsky fans from all over the world- Paris, Stockholm, Budapest, Melbourne, London, Mumbai, NY, La, Portland, Austin- it is international financing on a modest scale, but I am looking to build on it for my career. It’s also one part of strategy for funding, and marketing- building awareness’.

Pj teamed up with his friend Patrick Calderon who knows the social network media strategies to target Tarkovsky fans thru Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and Bloggers and get them to the Kickstarter site. ‘Tarkovsky- Time Within Time’ is in the middle of their campaign. Take a look, make a pledge, and tell everyone you helped Produce a movie!

Contact Pj Letofsky at pjletofsky[a]gmail.com...