L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin!

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43%

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Total Count: 14

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Movie Info

Filmmaker Yale Strom travels by train to Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region, once proclaimed a haven for the country's Semitic populations but, in reality, now more of a barren landscape. Strom is accompanied by a translator/bodyguard who denies the existence of anti-Semitism while muttering racist statements along the way. Archival and contemporary footage shows the chaotic past, present and possible futures of a region whose identity is still unclear.

Genre:

documentary
Original Language:

English
Director:

Yale Strom
Producer:

Elizabeth Schwartz
Runtime:

1h 33m

Cast & Crew

Yale Strom
Director

Elizabeth Schwartz
Producer

Critic Reviews for L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin

All Critics (14) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (6) | Rotten (8)

Energetic and informative, albeit more than a little haphazard.

March 6, 2003 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…

Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
The story of the JAR can be read as tragedy, but the exuberant Strom ... is by artistic temperament an optimist.

March 6, 2003

Ella Taylor
L.A. Weekly
Talking heads and shots of the grim landscape can get awfully tiresome.

January 31, 2003 | Rating: 2/4

V.A. Musetto
New York Post
A fertile concept vanishes behind confused, overwrought style.

January 30, 2003 | Rating: 2/5

Dave Kehr
New York Times
Like Strom's earlier docs, L'Chayim Comrade Stalin is best appreciated as an exercise in creative ethnography.

January 28, 2003

J. Hoberman
Village Voice
Quote not available.

December 6, 2005 | Rating: 2.5/5 | Full Review…

Film Threat
We are fortunate enough to see films like L'chayim Comrade Stalin, where the last brilliant sparks shine most astonishingly

November 3, 2005 | Rating: '2.5' | Full Review…

Jordan Hiller
Bangitout.com
Replete with surprises, twists and thought-provoking anecdotes.

March 14, 2003 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…

Wade Major
Boxoffice Magazine
The smarter film would have really put its beliefs through the wringer; Strom's movie contents itself with the surface and as such remains a wan, Xeroxed filmic hand-out of a potentially interesting historical sub-chapter.

March 10, 2003 | Rating: C- | Full Review…

Brent Simon
Entertainment Today
Like the swamps on which the Siberian town Birobidzhan was built, Yale Strom's latest documentary L'Chayim, Comrade Stalin! is mired in mediocrity.

February 13, 2003 | Rating: 1/4 | Full Review…

Elias Savada
Nitrate Online
Like the Jewish Autonomous Region itself, it is stillborn and empty.

February 12, 2003 | Rating: 2.5/5

Donald J. Levit
Film Threat
Strom, whether hamstrung by a lack of material or an inability to understand structure, delivers a slapdash work that is weak on a number of fronts.

February 12, 2003 | Full Review…

Doris Toumarkine
Film Journal International