Church of Film: Carnival Night

The youthful members of a Soviet House of Culture are preparing a magical New Years Eve party, with a masquerade and a variety show full of song, dance, and performance. However, their director dies and is replaced at the last minute by the glowering apparatchik Comrade Ogurtsov… and he doesn’t like any of it. But the show must go on, and the kids resolve to run the party as planned—with or without Ogurtsov’s approval.

CARNIVAL NIGHT is a warm, jazzy spectacle and comedy that ushered in the post-Stalin period by taking satirical stabs at grey-faced, finger wagging Party functionaries, and giving a generous bow to the new generation.