Computer Games (1987) – The Aral Sea
Aleksandr Sidel'nikov's Computer Games (Lennauchfilm, 1987), made with the Vologda writer Anatolii Ekhalov, treats Soviet planning as an exercise in mathematical optimization played at a remove from its consequences. The film opens with the conservative publicist Mikhail Antonov, a Nash sovremennik voice of the Russophile right, addressing a computer on the limits of such models. From there it moves between the consolidation of "non-prospective" villages in the Russian north and the diversion of the Amu Darya for Central Asian cotton — Russia's north and the Karakalpak south as parallel cases of the same pathology. In the Aral section, planners' diagrams and "the attack on the Kara-Kum" cut to a stranded boat in a fisherman's yard, set against archival footage of nets drawn in laden.
Credits: Компьютерные игры (Computer Games). Lennauchfilm Studio, Leningrad, 1987. Directed by Aleksandr Sidel'nikov; scenario by Sidel'nikov and Anatolii Ekhalov.