A scene from Vosxozhdenie

At 41 she died of a car crash in 1979 and it almost spelled the end of an era that spanned a humble 4 films. She was a major figure of the postwar Soviet Cinema. But her early death has been the cause of neglect of her work that was done under some really harsh conditions.

Now Eclipse along with the Criterion collection is devoting two of her cinematic masterpieces “The Wings” and “The Ascent”. This is in order to revive her overshadowed career in her films.

She and her husband filmmaker Elem Klimov were like the glamorous first couple of the Soviet New Wave, that launched the greats like Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky to immense international acclaim.

The films during this time were one of the landmarks in soviet history. They ushered an era of cinematic revolts that were sweeping the globe in the 60s. This was further heightened because of a huge cultural shift known simply as Thaw it was a total u turn from the hard line Stalinist politics that had plagued the nation.

Sheptiko studied at the famous State Film Institute in Moscow, where she met her husband. She was tutored by Aleksandr Dovzhenko a great cinematic poet of the silent era. But it was only during her graduation and her subsequent film Heat that made her a defintive filmmaker for this era. The story of an idealistic man and leader of a collective farm who have bitter arguments on many philosophical questions. It was shot under severe conditions. Sheptiko had to enlist her lover to help with its completion

Then came Wings a film that had its focus on a female protagonist. The woman in this Nadezhda Petrovna( the Tarkovsky actress Maya Bulgakova) was once a celebrated fighter pilot in her youth. She is now leading a social life that is somewhat a total contrast to what she was once. It deals with the disappointment she feels as a person with some very subtle emotions. She ends up living her life as a principal in a provincial town.

Her next film was the one before her crowning achievement Ascent it was called “You and I”. The story tells about a successful doctor who leaves everything to work at a clinic in Siberia, similar to her previous work in that it voices the values that the Soviet society has been growing to own.

Then her masterpiece The Ascent that talks about the painful yet rare period in which a country occupied by Germany now Belarus during the World War II. It shows the lives of two Communist partisans who are separated from their platoon and now left to fend for themeselves in the icy wilderness. Finally the both men are captured and one is held under investigation and torture while the other is left running away for his life. The film was widely regarded as an ode to all the pain caused by the Germans and had references from the Bible. There were also explicit parallels to Christ and Judas. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

The fatal crash happened which not only took her life but the lives of her most celebrated crew including master cinematographer Vladimir Chukhnov. Her husband and completed his wife’s last feature “Farewell to Matyora” and an eventual tribute called “Larisa”. His final film and probably greatest ever “Come and See” was plainly an ode to his wife’s work The Ascent.

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