Film Yuri Kara in the picture again
November 24, 2006
In 1994 director Yuri Kara adapted The Master and Margarita for screen. His film was the most expensive post-Soviet production. High inflation and an unstable rouble made the costs go sky-high for the production company TAMP - up to 15 million dollar.. When the movie was ready producers Arsen Adamyan, Irena Mineeva, Aleksander Mishin and Vladimir Skory decided not to release it. Vladimir Skory said that Yuri Kara's director's cut was unacceptable. The soundtrack recorded by Alfred Schnittke was released on CD.
The cast was impressive: it consisted of very famous Russian actors like Anastasia Vertinskaya (Margarita), Valentin Gaft (Woland), Mikhail Ulyanov (Pontius Pilate), Nikolai Burlyaev (Yeshua), Leo Durov (Matthew Levi). In 2005 a limited number of Moscovites could see the movie on a besloten vertoning at the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF). One of the happy few was journalist Valeriy Kitshin of the Rossyskaya Gazeta. He was so impressed that he wanted to make efforts to have it released, and he contacted the producers.
Today Kitshin published an interview with all concerned. Conclusion: the producers and Kara are coming closer to each other, but a new troublemaker showed up in the person of Sergey Shilovsky. This grandson of Bulgakov's third wife Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya now claims, as a self-assigned heir, the rights on Bulgakov's literary inheritance. He says that TAMP has the time until mid-2007 to show a lot of money. If they don't, he will sell the rights to another interested party which he keeps in reserve.