[ film ]

Though his career spans nearly half a century, director Aleksei Guerman can count only six films to his name. The spaces in between are filled by battles with Soviet censors and long spans where those films sat on shelves, gathering dust, awaiting the attention (or, more importantly, the lack of attention) of a less repressive regime. Still, those half-dozen titles are enough to merit Guerman a place in the pantheon beside his more renowned countryman Andrei Tarkovsky. In conjunction with Bryn Mawr College’s Russian Department, Bryn Mawr Film Institute will screen four of Guerman’s directorial efforts, along with The Fall of Otrar, a historical epic he co-wrote and produced. Stocked with compromised characters, the series includes My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1986), a tragicomic tale of a journalist and a provincial police captain, and Trial on the Road (1971), about a Nazi collaborator out to prove his patriotism.

Oct. 23-Nov. 6, $7, Bryn Mawr Film Institute, 824 W. Lancaster Ave., 610-527-9898, brynmawrfilm.org.