Leningrad and Osaka have been twinned since 1979. The filmmakers try to find something similar in these cities. Both Leningrad and Osaka are former capitals, whose main purpose was to enter the world through large ports. Filming took place in both Japan and Leningrad, in various places - universities, theaters, shops, families, temples, construction sites and the subway.
Bell ringers ring the bells in the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Leningrad.
View and panorama of the square in front of the cathedral (from above).
Stairs leading to the bell tower.
Bell ringers of the bell ringing ensemble ring the bells.
Bridges being raised in Leningrad.
Houses in Osaka, a pond near the house, turtles descending into the water along a wooden platform.
Panorama of stone slabs in the middle of the pond, raindrops on the surface of the water.
View of part of the Shitenoji Temple, one of the ancient Buddhist temples in Osaka, a statue of Buddha (panorama).
People inside the temple.
A boy in the temple.
A woman lights candles in the temple.
View of the temple with a multi-tiered pagoda.
A man prays in front of the statue in the courtyard of the temple.
Panorama of a stone wall, view of part of a canal and a modern quarter of Osaka.
A Russian teacher gives a Japanese language lesson.
The students repeat Japanese words after the teacher.
One of the listeners speaks about Japan as a very interesting country and about his desire to learn more about the language and history of Japan (synchronously).
Panoramic view of a part of a reservoir in a park in Osaka.
A lesson in traditional Japanese sword fighting in a gym.
The face of a Japanese youth.
Japanese boys and girls during a Russian language lesson.
The teacher reads sentences in Russian, the listeners repeat.
The face of a girl.
A Russian language lesson in Osaka.
A young man at a table listens to the teacher.
View of a part of the Fontanka River embankment in the summer garden near the summer palace of Peter the Great in winter.
A bear in the snow in the Leningrad Zoo.
A Japanese youth speaks about the general perception of Russia by the Japanese, about the reasons for studying the Russian language (synchronously, in Japanese, voice-over translation).
Isamo Fujita and members of his family at the entrance to his own house, panoramic view of a part of the garden.
Fujita introduces the members of his family, talks about his house (synchronously), faces of the members of the Fujita family.
Fujita's son talks about the loss of interest in politics in Japan, about modern Japanese youth (synchronously).
A ladle with a handle at a spring with drinking water in the Fujita garden.
The Fujita grandchildren play in the garden.
The Fujita children and grandchildren at the entrance to the house.
The Fujita wife sets the table.
Shoes on the porch of the house.
The Fujita family at the dinner table.
1988
Leningrad Osaka
Winter Summer
The face of the Fujita wife.
A Japanese religious ceremony in the Fujita home.
Family members at the table, the head of the family reading a prayer at the home altar.
View of part of the garden near the Fujita home.
A postman on a scooter delivers mail, puts a letter in the mailbox.
The Fujita family at the entrance to the yard of the house.
Girls on bicycles.
Views of Osaka streets and houses from the bus window.
Views of modern neighborhoods.
View of a road junction and a city block (from above).
A ship is sailing along the bay.
View of the bridge over the canal, panorama of part of the port.
A monorail train passes.
The train stops at the station.
Passengers get off the carriage.
Entrance to a shopping center near the port.
Ships pass under the railway bridge.
Children play on the playground.
A woman with two children is riding a bicycle.
View of the deck of the stern of the ship and part of the Osaka port.
A passenger hydrofoil ship is sailing along the Neva to the Gulf of Finland.
Sailing yachts at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland.
View of the bow of a hydrofoil vessel.
Breaker behind the stern of the vessel, yachts on the water.
View of a part of the Leningrad cargo port with cargo containers (top).
Loading a container onto a vessel using a crane.
Panorama of a part of the port.
Ships approaching the berths.
View of the Admiralty building and St.
Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Circular panorama of the dome of St.
Isaac's Cathedral (top).
View of a part of Catherine's Palace (top).
The Samson Fountain in Peterhof (top).
View of a part of Nevsky Prospect.
New houses on the Neva embankment.
A bricklayer lays bricks.
View of residential buildings under construction.
Concrete work at a construction site.
Concreters at work.
Panorama of a well-shaped courtyard, walls of a house without windows, construction waste in the yard.
The face of an elderly woman in an open window.
Babies in a maternity hospital.
A film crew is filming in a maternity hospital.
The face of the mother of the five millionth Leningrader.
Smiling face of a young father.
Medal for a newborn.
Solemn ceremony of presenting an order for a new apartment to the Rusakov family, photojournalists are filming.
Presentation of a symbolic key to the apartment.
A mother of many children lists the names of the children depicted on a souvenir plate.
The Shatrov family with many children in a room of one of the apartments.
Faces of children and adults.
A photo of the eldest son in military uniform.
The mother of the family talks about receiving an apartment and the available benefits (synchronously and off-screen), the faces of the children.
The father of the family talks about his worries and his work, about the assistance provided by the enterprise (synchronously and off-screen).
A grandmother with one of her grandchildren.
Shatrova at the baby's crib, the child falls asleep in the crib.
The Shatrovs talk about Christian and human morality (synchronously).
The Shatrov children at the piano during music lessons, the younger ones are playing on the sofa.
Everyday life of the Shatrov family.
1988
Osaka Leningrad
Summer
Panorama of the area near the Osaka subway station (top).
Passengers entering the station during rush hour.
Passengers passing through the turnstiles, faces of passengers.
Passengers descending onto the platform into the vestibule.
Interior of the subway station during rush hour.
Passengers exiting the train, panorama of the CCTV screens.
A subway worker regulating the flow of people.
A subway train during boarding of passengers.
The station attendant gives the signal for the train to depart.
People pass through the turnstiles.
Passengers descending the stairs.
Passengers boarding the train.
The attendant gives the signal to the driver.
Subway workers talk about the difficulties of working during rush hour (simultaneously, in Japanese, voice-over).
Carriages of a passing train.
Uniformed employees of one of the newly opened department stores greet the first customers with a bow.
Customers and salespeople in the halls of the department store, salespeople bow to customers.
Shoppers going up the escalator.
Passengers of the Leningrad metro on the escalator.
Passengers go through the turnstiles at one of the stations of the Leningrad metro.
View of part of Nevsky Prospekt.
People on Nevsky Prospekt, faces of girls.
A woman takes money from all the pockets of a man, alternates with black-and-white shots of a sale and shopping frenzy in one of the Leningrad department stores.
Traffic on Nevsky Prospekt, a man carries a box with a TV on his head.
People stand in line.
Street artist on Nevsky Prospekt.
Young people dancing at a disco.
Performance of the group "Aquarium" led by B. Grebenshchikov.
People pose for street artists near Gostiny Dvor.
Fragment of a graphic portrait.
The face of the artist.
Panorama of part of the rally near the Kazan Cathedral.
Participants of the rally carry out a banner with a slogan.
View of part of the rally. B. Grebenshchikov giving a speech.
Rally participants applauding.
Police officers take a banner away from rally participants.
Rally participants being detained, a hand covering a camera lens.
Detainees being led to buses.
An artist painting a picture in his home.
Parishioners on the grounds of an Orthodox church during a holiday.
A priest sprinkling parishioners with holy water.
A woman praying, kneeling in front of the church.
Portrait of F.M. Dostoevsky on the wall, interiors of the rooms of the Dostoevsky museum-apartment (panorama).
View of the Lion Bridge on the Griboyedov Canal.
View of the sky from the well-yard (from bottom to top, 360-degree panorama of the house walls). 360-degree panorama of the yard.
Fountain pen on a sheet of paper.
Grebenshchikov Boris Borisovich -- singer
composer
musician
poet
1988
Osaka Leningrad
Summer
An image of lines on a human palm on the wall of a lantern, candles burning inside.
A bride and guests before a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony (panorama).
The bride, groom and guests walk down the corridor to the place where the ceremony is taking place.
Color music at a disco.
Young people dancing at a disco in Osaka, faces of dancing young people.
A Japanese wedding ceremony, the bride and groom drinking from ritual cups.
The newlyweds walk around the tables in the banquet hall with guests sitting at them.
Young men and women at a disco in Osaka talk about themselves and their musical preferences (synchronously, in Japanese, voice-over translation).
Young people dancing at a disco, a DJ at the microphone.
Participants in an auction at the fish market in Osaka take part in the bidding.
Preparing fresh fish for sale.
One of the fish buyers answers a question about the results of the past trade, the quality of the fish, the competition, the difficulties of the job and his family (synchronously and off-screen, in Japanese, off-screen translation).
Everyday work at the fish market.
Vehicles are being unloaded (panorama).
Floors and wooden pallets are being washed with water from a hose.
Panorama of the fish cutting workshop.
Panorama of a part of the sales area, fish on the shelves.
A mechanical drummer doll.
A lesson at a children's music school in Osaka, children playing the violins.
Parents talk about how their children got into a music school, discuss the need for a basic musical education (synchronously).
Children's faces.
Parents with children before the start of the work of the Admissions Committee of the Leningrad Vaganova Choreographic School.
Measuring the height of a young applicant.
A choreographer testing a boy to perform various movements at the ballet barre, hands of the committee members taking notes.
Testing of the next candidates.
The choreographer's face.
A pen in the hand of one of the committee members.
Checking boys and girls for body flexibility.
The choreographer checks the flexibility of a girl's foot.
The committee members make notes on pieces of paper.
The choreographer during another test.
1988
Osaka Leningrad
Autumn Summer
The face of one of the members of the admissions committee of the Leningrad Vaganova Choreographic School.
A girl during testing at the ballet barre, the face of a choreographer.
Ballet fragments, checking the muscles of a young applicant for flexibility.
Panorama of the auditorium of the Leningrad Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater.
Presentation of flowers to the ballet dancers.
A mother and daughter leave the building of the Leningrad Choreographic School.
View of a part of the Fontanka embankment.
The face of one of the theater's artists.
A robot offers a hand to a girl at an exhibition in Osaka.
Automated process of assembling electronic circuits at a plant in Osaka.
Panorama of a conveyor for assembling VCRs.
Manual production process at one of the shoe factories in Osaka.
Manual cutting of leather, the face of a cutter.
The process of making women's shoes, the face of a worker.
Finished products of a shoe factory on a shelf, one of the manual production processes.
Car traffic on one of the streets of Osaka (panorama).
Panorama of highways in one of the new quarters of Osaka (top).
View of a part of Osaka (top).
Bell with a swinging "tongue".
Spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Leningrad, lantern on the Palace Bridge.
View of the monument to Peter the Great in winter.
Hole in the ice of the Neva (top), panorama of buildings on the opposite bank.
Pigeons on the fence of the Neva embankment.
View of part of the building of St.
Isaac's Cathedral and the monument to Nicholas I. Statues between the windows on the wall of the building (panorama).
Crowd of people near the A.S. Pushkin Apartment Museum on Moika Embankment, 12 during the anniversary of Pushkin's death in January 1987 (panorama).
Participants in the memorial event on the embankment.
Flowers and burning candles near the pedestal of the Pushkin monument, people stand around the monument.
People put bouquets of flowers on the street-side windowsills, light candles, panorama of the dome of St.
Isaac's Cathedral.
Views of the park in Osaka.
Statue of Buddha.
Faces of visitors to the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, statues of Buddha in the museum's exhibition.
Images of the Madonna and Child in the Hermitage exhibition.
Faces of visitors to the Hermitage.
1988
Osaka Leningrad
Summer Winter
Visitors look at paintings and exhibits in the halls of the Hermitage.
A sculpture in one of the halls.
Panorama of the Leningrad Philharmonic Hall.
Newsreel from 1942: people on the streets of besieged Leningrad.
A corpse is taken to the cemetery on a sled.
Ice drift on the Neva in the spring of 1942. A cross floats on the water.
Japanese soldiers on the streets of the destroyed city.
Panorama of Osaka in 1945. A woman carries a child on her back.
View of a monument with a cross in Leningrad.
The bridge over the Neva being raised.
The cruiser Aurora is towed along the Neva past St.
Isaac's Cathedral.
Spans of the raised bridge, view of part of the cruiser's superstructure.
Monuments of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
The span of the Liteiny Bridge rises, fireworks in the sky.
Autumn leaves fall from the trees.
View of the raised bridge span during the passage of the cruiser "Aurora" along the Neva, people on the embankment.
View of the spit of Vasilievsky Island at sunset through the arch of the Liteiny Bridge, panorama of the bridge.
People walk along a pedestrian crossing in Osaka, panorama of part of the street.
1988
Leningrad Osaka
Summer Autumn Spring