Renata LITVINOVA
Рената ЛИТВИНОВА
Renata LITVINOVA
Russia, 2004, 105mn 
Colour, fiction
Boginiya: kak ya polyubila
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Богиня: как я полюбила

 

 The Goddess

 Déesse

 
Directed by : Renata LITVINOVA (Рената ЛИТВИНОВА)
Writing credits : Renata LITVINOVA (Рената ЛИТВИНОВА)
 
Cast
Gleb ALEINIKOV (Глеб АЛЕЙНИКОВ)
Konstantin KHABENSKY (Константин ХАБЕНСКИЙ)
Andrey KRASKO (Андрей КРАСКО)
Renata LITVINOVA (Рената ЛИТВИНОВА)
Yelena RUFANOVA (Елена РУФАНОВА)
Maksim SUKHANOV (Максим СУХАНОВ)
Viktor SUKHORUKOV (Виктор СУХОРУКОВ)
Svetlana SVETLICHNAYA (Светлана СВЕТЛИЧНАЯ)
 
Cinematography : Vladislav OPELIANTS (Владислав ОПЕЛЬЯНЦ)
Production design : Yekaterina ZALETAEVA (Екатерина ЗАЛЕТАЕВА)
Produced by : Yelena YATSURA (Елена ЯЦУРА)
Companies : Bogvoudkino / Slovo
Film revenue in Russia : 0.170 million dollars
 

Plot synopsis
[...]In The Goddess, Litvinova examines this dynamic further, expanding on the experience of one individual from her array of beautiful homunculi. Faina is an investigator with a division of Moscow police, who has an uncanny and hit-and-miss style of inspection, who lives in a moodily dilapidated apartment with red high heels for house-slippers, and who is haunted by dreams that exhort her toward death. All of the above seems related directly to her great tragic flaw: “I do not understand anything about love.” Faina states this, truthfully and without affectation, and elicits any number of allusive definitions of love: it is a river one cannot climb out of; it is something not quite fleshy, but still bloody; it is viscerally fleshy as well as bloody; it is the meaning of life. These definitions, for the most part realized verbally instead of visually, fail for the greater part of the film to resonate within Faina’s loveless soul.[...]
Elise Thorsen, rusfilm.pitt.edu/
 

commentaries
The Goddess: How I Fell in Love [Богиня: Как я полюбила], Elise THORSEN, rusfilm.pitt.edu, 2012
Camp Cinema : Russian Style, neweastcinema.pitt.edu, 2012
Renata Litvinova, The Goddess [Boginia] (2004), Seth GRAHAM, kinokultura.com, 2005
 

Selected in the following festivals or events :
- "Spirit of Fire" International Debut Film Festival, Khanty Mansiysk (Russia), 2013
- Author Cinema Festival "Polnyy arthouse", Chelyabinsk (Russia), 2013
- Russian film symposium. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh (USA), 2012
- Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema, Pesaro (Italy), 2010
- Russian Film Festival, London (United Kingdom), 2007
- Festival Kinoblick, Stuttgart (Germany), 2005
- Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam (Netherlands), 2005
- Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF), Moscow (Russia), 2005
- Award "White Elephant", Moscow (Russia), 2004
- "Vyborg" Russian Film Festival (formerly ''A Window to Europe''), Vyborg (Russia), 2004