Friday, January 21
An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano
dir. Nikita Mikhalkov, USSR 1977

At a picturesque, remote estate in turn of the century Russia, a jovial physician, Nikolai (Nikita Mikhalkov) recounts an indelicate tale — momentarily stopping to inspect his reflection on a silver carafe — of his truncated courtship of a young woman named Ksyusha Kalitina following an embarrassing encounter with the deaf, elderly nurse at the Kalitin home after the diligent woman wandered into his room by mistake and proceeded to treat him for a nonexistent gastrointestinal ailment — an unusual greeting that he nevertheless accommodated under the presumption that she must be performing some eccentric family custom. - Strictly Film School