Join the Shelton Film Society!

We'll be screening cool flicks at Marmo on the second Friday of every month including classics, Italian films, art films, horror, & more!

Wine, snacks, and non-alcoholic beverages are available for purchase. Spend a cozy evening with us, bring a cushion or blanket if you'd like.

Screening February 14: Aleksandr Ptushko – The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Skazka o Tsare Saltane)

Free/Public

Produced in partnership with the Shelton Timberland Library and Kanopy

The Tale of Tsar Saltan

(Aleksandr Ptushko, Soviet Union, 1967, 85 min, in Russian with English subtitles)

Based on a famous fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin, The Tale of Tsar Saltan is one of director Aleksandr Ptushko’s most sublime creations: a ravishingly beautiful fantasy about love, magic, betrayal, and abandoned family. Driven from the Russian court by her sisters’ scheming, the young Tsarina is thrown into the sea in a cask with her infant son. Surviving the storm-tossed voyage, the mother and her now magically-adult son land on a remote island where he falls in love with a Swan Princess in human form, and longs for a reunion with his estranged father, Tsar Saltan.

Like his earlier masterpieces Sampo and Ilya Muromets, Tsar Saltan is filled with breathtaking imagery: carved wooden lions who shed tears; peasants in pagan ritual masks, dancing in the snow; the treacherous faces of conspirators bathed in red candle glow like the witches in Macbeth. Ptushko’s second-to-last feature, Tsar Saltan has been gorgeously restored by Mosfilm and Deaf Crocodile for its first-ever Blu-ray release in the U.S., co-presented with Seagull Films.