The cultural initiative Texture 10, in collaboration with the Dovzhenko Centre and Film at Lincoln Center (New York), presents the retrospective Kira Muratova: Sketches of Chaos. This is the first full posthumous retrospective of the director in the United States.
The event will run from 16 to 25 May 2025 at Film at Lincoln Center (New York). The programme includes 16 films by Muratova, including one restored in 4K. This is a significant international initiative that brings Muratova’s name back into the global film discourse and opens her work to a new audience.
On 16 May, on Friday, the retrospective will open at the Walter Reade Theatre in Lincoln Center, New York, with the premiere of Muratova’s landmark film Asthenic Syndrome, restored in 4K by the Criterion Collection.
In total, the Odesa-based director’s career lasted from the early 60s until her death in 2018.
The retrospective Kira Muratova: Sketches of Chaos is curated by Marta Kuzma, Professor of Art at Yale School of Art and Chief Curator of Texture 10, and film critic and writer Ivan Kozlenko. The project is co-implemented by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre in Kyiv. The retrospective is held in collaboration with Film at Lincoln Center, represented in particular by Deputy Programming Director Maddie Whittle, as well as the Criterion Collection and Janus Films. The retrospective is part of Facts 10, a key initiative of RIBBON International.
“After a long period of time when Muratova as a filmmaker was deprived of the recognition she deserved, her works, once shelved, have returned to the public sphere, with the films Short Encounters and Long Farewells being introduced to the French audience. In the post-Soviet era, the author’s films resonated with audiences and critics, who paid tribute to her unorthodox approach to the socio-political conventions and rituals of a society in transformation. According to Muratova, it was a period of suspended animation: after the dominance of ideology and before the dominance of the market. Muratova’s triumph was Asthenic Syndrome, where the condition of the same name makes people fall asleep when they are in pain,” writes project curator Marta Kuzma.