September 2009: Reviews of How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
OK, I swear, I'll stop ranting right after this about how that last Ken Burns "The National Parks" documentary didn't need to run for 12 hours, but watching "How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin" on PBS provides a great reminder of crisp, economical documentary storytelling., The one-hour special will air Nov. 9 and marks the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. Yet producer-director-narrator Leslie Woodhead makes a stirring case about how the Beatles -- at least as much as all the spy-counterspy antics of the Cold War years -- befuddled and undermined Kremlin leaders, speaking to a generation of Soviet youths who were wildly enamored with the Fab Four's music., HowTheBeatlesRocked, Woodhead interviews a wide assortment of Russians who privately rocked to Beatles songs, interspersed with footage of the boring state-run entertainment that the kids there rejected. He also talks of the legend of an impromptu "secret concert" spurred by the group's "Back in the U.S.S.R.," and eventually illustrates the Beatles' triumph over the Soviet leadership when we see a Russian Perry Como type singing a very stiff version of "Hey Jude.", Russia's deputy premier, Sergei Ivanov, can't seem to suppress a big goofy grin as he talks about learning English in part by listening to smuggled Beatles records, and Woodhead speaks to Beatles cover bands that remain prevalent throughout the old Soviet bloc to this today. The spec culminates with Paul McCartney performing to what can only be described as rapturous fans., All told, it's both an enlightening and inordinately fun look at how the Beatles' influence might actually have been more significant within the Soviet Union than the west. And did this WNET-backed production really do all that in an hour?, Yeah yeah yeah.
John Lloyd, Financial Times Most charming programme of the past week was Leslie
Woodhead’s contribution to Beatles’ week (Storyville:
How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin, BBC4 Monday), on how the
group undermined the Soviet Union. Here [Woodhead ] returns to a
theme he broached in a tremendous 1992 piece (with Reggie
Nadelson) on Dean Reed, the American rock
singer adopted by the Soviet Union: the place and effect of rock
in a closed ideological system. …The real
glory of the film was the people and events it captured: Josif Kobzon,
the USSR’s official songster, doing “Hey Jude”; Belorussian rocker
Yuri Pelyushonok getting his old combo together to sing a special
composition on the effect of the Beatles (“Hey, pal, don’t wake the
people!”); and best of all, Kolya Vasin – “I’m sure God sent them
to us” – a bearded Russian mystic out of Dostoyevsky by way of Liverpool,
who created the Beatles museum over 40 devoted, demented years. This
Storyville production showed what
one can do with care, time and devotion: lead us to understand something
of the universe so that we can be, not its masters, but a little
more its citizens. The Scotsman Storyville – How the Beatles
Rocked the Kremlin presents
a refreshingly different perspective on their significance, by showing
how their music may have contributed to the collapse of the USSR.
It sounds like a ludicrously lofty claim, but renowned documentary
filmmaker Leslie Woodhead, with the help of several ageing fans (including
Putin's deputy prime minister), argues persuasively that their music
– banned in the USSR and bootlegged by teenagers – instilled dreams
of hope and freedom of expression within an entire generation, which
eventually led to the demise of communism. If we must have new documentaries
about the Beatles, then they should be from interesting new angles
such as this. July 2009 I have now completed post production on HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN, and the film is due to be transmitted as part of the BBC "STORYVILLE" series on September 7. The ARTE version will be shown in Europe during October, and the PBS version will be screened across the States on November 8th. It's been a long gestation, but editing the rich material was a joy, and I hope the birth will be welcomed." Watch the trailer of How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin here
November 2008
Recently returned from shooting in St Petersburg and Moscow for my film “HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN” . I filmed at a day-long birthday party for John Lennon in St Petersburg where a dozen Russian bands belted out Beatles songs and local Fab fans ranging in age from 12 to 80 sang along. Among a rich harvest of witnesses who told me how the Beatles had changed their lives, I interviewed Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s Deputy Premier who insisted that he learned English from smuggled Beatles records. I shot with a Beatles Punk band whose leader is changing his name from Igor to John Lennon. And at St Petersburg’s super-opulent Pushkin Ball, I filmed Russia’s mega rich dancing to “Yesterday”., The film will be completed for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2009.
August 2008
My next shoot for the film will be in October, and will include the celebrations in St Petersburg for John Lennon's birthday on October 9th. The film will be completed for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 2009.
"HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED
THE KREMLIN" I’ve always been fascinated by the story of how the moptops conquered the world. And since I’ve made a series of documentaries in the former Evil Empire over the past 30 years, I have a special taste for this film.
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Variety (November 05, 2009)
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