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"Ostern" is also an alternative spelling of Ostara and German for Easter

The Ostern (Eastern) or Red Western (also known as "Borscht Western") was the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries' take on the Western.

It generally took two forms:

1. Proper Red Westerns, set in America's 'Wild West', such as Lemonade Joe (Czechoslovakia, 1964), or the East-German The Sons of the Great Bear (1966) or The Oil, the Baby and the Transylvanians (Romania, 1981), or A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines (USSR, 1987), involving radically different themes and genres. These were much more common in Eastern Europe, rather than the USSR itself.
2. Easterns (Osterns), set usually on the steppes or Asian parts of the USSR, especially during the Russian Revolution or the following Civil War. Examples of these include Dauria (1971), The Burning Miles (1957), The Bodyguard (1979), At Home among Strangers (1971), The Sixth (1981), and the famous Soviet film White Sun of the Desert (1969). While some of these are obviously influenced by Westerns, in some cases, the material can be seen as a parallel formation.

Many of these films contained political messages, but they can still be watched as action films, comedies etc.

Red Westerns in an international context[link]

Red Westerns of the first type are often compared to Spaghetti Westerns, in that they use local scenery to double up for the American West. In particular, Yugoslavia, Mongolia and the Southern USSR were used. Some of the East German made films were called Sauerkraut Westerns.

'Red Westerns' provide a counterpoint to familiar mythologies and conventions of the original genre, particularly as the makers were on the other side of a propaganda war without parallel, the Cold War, and this is partially why many have never been shown in the west, at least not until after the Cold War ended. In a war in which many fabrications were made on both sides, there was often a lingering fascination with the cultural developments in enemy countries.

Westerns have proven particularly transferable in the way that they create a mythology out of relatively recent history, a malleable idea that translates well to different cultures. In Soviet Union, the Ostern uses the generic calling cards of the American Western to dramatise the Civil War in Central Asia in the 1920s and 1930s, in which the Red Army fought against Islamic Turkic 'Basmachi' rebels. By substituting, 'red' for 'blue' and 'Turk' for Mexican or Indian, there are the same opportunities for a sweeping drama played out against a backdrop of wide-open spaces. The Ural Mountains can be equivalent to Monument Valley, the Volga River for the Rio Grande. Add the gun slinging ethos, horse riding, working the land, pioneers of a sort (ideological often in this case), the bounty hunter traversing difficult terrain with outlaw in tow, railroading and taming the wild frontier and you have a generic mirror image of the American genre.

Red Westerns which use the actual American west as a setting include, the Romanian The Oil, the Baby and the Transylvanians (1981) which dramatises the struggles of Romanian and Hungarian settlers in a new land. The Czech Lemonade Joe and the Soviet A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines plump for pastiche or satire, making fun of the hard worn conventions of the American films. The German The Sons of the Great Bear (1966) turned the traditional American "Cowboy and Indian" conventions on their head, casting the Native Americans as the heroes and the American Army as the villains - this was well within the established tradition of Karl May's highly successful German Western novels, but had some obvious Cold War overtones. The film started a series of "Indian films" by the East German DEFA studios which were quite successful.

Interestingly, many of the non-Soviet examples of the genre were international co-productions akin to the Spaghetti Westerns. The Sons of the Great Bear for example was a co-production between East Germany and Czechoslovakia, starring a Yugoslav, scripted in German, and shot in a number of different Eastern Bloc countries and used a variety of locations including Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Mongolia and Czechoslovakia. The Oil, the Baby and the Transylvanians was a Romanian film, but featured emigrant Hungarians heavily in the storyline.

The Ostern and the Revisionist Western[link]

There is some divergence between the true Red Western and the true Eastern in their portrayal of certain subject matter.

Proper Red Westerns share some features in common with the general Revisionist Western, notably, a more sympathetic portrayal of working people, native Americans, and Mexicans. In the true Red Western more focus was put on the lawlessness of the time period, favoring realism over romanticism.

With the true "Ostern" ("Eastern"), some of these tendencies may be reversed, particularly in reference to Soviet history and particularly in the context of the Russian Civil War and Basmachi rebellion. Sympathy for the working class is obviously paramount, but it is also common to romanticise and stereotype non-Russian characters. Thus, Osterns often cast Russian or Jewish actors in prominent "ethnic" parts. Spartak Mishulin, who plays Sayid in White Sun of the Desert, and Konstantin Raikin, who plays Kayum in At Home among Strangers, are just some examples of this (compare Eli Wallach in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly). At Home among Strangers, for example, whilst critically acclaimed, has a very one-sided view of its period, which was partly due to political pressure.

What they both share with the revisionist Western, includes a disdain for the business class (cf Once Upon a Time in the West and its critique of the rail builders), organised religion and Christianity and the so called "American Dream" and its related ethic.

There is also some common ground with the Zapata Western genre, which is often related to the Mexican Revolution, notably A Fistful of Dynamite which is a serious, non-romanticized look at revolution.

In Dauria (1971), Siberian Cossacks are acting like American cowboys: horseriding, fighting, shooting, and even robbing a bank.

Influence[link]

A number of films from the former Eastern bloc, while not falling neatly into the genre, are partly influenced by it. Siberiade by Andrei Konchalovsky, the isolated Siberian frontier town, which becomes irrevocably changed thanks to the discovery of oil, bears a resemblance to Western family epics.

Gibanica westerns[link]

"Gibanica western" was a short-lived term for the Yugoslav equivalent of the Ostern, more commonly known as partisan film and, sometimes, the Partisan western. They were made in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and were about the partisans in World War II. At that point, Yugoslavia had broken away from the Soviets.

Goulash Westerns[link]

The Goulash Westerns are the Easterns of Hungarian director György Szomjas. He directed two films (The Wind Blows Under Your Feet and Wrong-Doers) in the 1970s.

Films[link]

List of typical "Easterns" includes "cowboy" films made in East European countries, such as East Germany, former Yugoslavia, former Czechoslovakia and also movies that followed American westerns but were made in the former Soviet Union and on post-Soviet Russia.

• Lemonade Joe
• The Sons of Great Bear
• Chingachgook, die große Schlange
• White Sun of the Desert
• Dauria (film)
• At Home Among Strangers

See also[link]

• Zapata Westerns, a political subgenre of "spaghetti"
• Dean Reed
• Vsevolod Ivanov, Soviet writer who was a formative influence on the Ostern.

Philippe Herreweghe, 2011.

Philippe Herreweghe (born 2 May 1947, Ghent) is a Belgian conductor.

In his school years at the University of Ghent, Herreweghe combined studies in medical science and psychiatry with a musical education at the Ghent Conservatory, where Marcel Gazelle, Yehudi Menuhin's accompanist, was his piano teacher. In the same period, he began conducting and in 1970 founded the Collegium Vocale Ghent, and gave up medicine. Very soon Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt took notice of his musical approach, and invited him and the "Collegium Vocale Gent" to join them in their recordings of the complete Bach cantatas.

Herreweghe's approach to baroque music came to be widely recognised, and in 1977 he founded another ensemble in Paris, La Chapelle Royale, to perform the music of the French Golden Age. Since then he has started several other groups and ensembles with whom he managed to create a repertoire stretching from the Renaissance to contemporary music: the Ensemble Vocale Européen, specialised in Renaissance polyphony, and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, founded in 1991 to bring alive, once again, the repertoire of the romantic and pre-romantic era on original instruments.

He is principally known as a conductor of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is regarded by leading Bach scholars today as a founding father of the baroque authentic practice, original instrument movement and one of record label Harmonia Mundi's most prolific recording artists, with over sixty albums to his name.

As a guest conductor, Philippe Herreweghe has conducted a number of well known orchestras including the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Dutch Broadcasting Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. Philippe Herreweghe was artistic director of the Festival of Saintes in 1982 and voted European Musician of the Year in 1990. From 1998 to 2002, Herreweghe was chief conductor of DeFilharmonie (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders), and now holds the title of Hoofddirigent (principal conductor) with the orchestra.

Selected discography[link]

For most of his recording career Herreweghe has been closely associated with Harmonia Mundi of Bernard Coutaz.

• Lassus Moduli Quinis Vocibus, 1571 (producer Michel Bernstein) Astrée 7780, 1979
• Johann Sebastian Bach 4 short Masses. Mass in B-Minor. Cantatas BWV39, 73, 93, 105, 107, 131 Virgin Classics 1990,1991.
• C.P.E. Bach Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu, Virgin Classics
• Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem, Harmonia Mundi, 1996
• Mozart, Requiem, Collegium Vocale and La Chapelle Royale, Harmonia Mundi, 1997
• Bach, Magnificat, La Chapelle Royale, Harmonia Mundi, 1999
• Bach, St Matthew Passion Collegium Vocale, Harmonia Mundi, 1999
• Rameau, Les Indes Galantes, La Chapelle Royale, Musique d'Abord, 2000
• Bach, St John Passion, Collegium Vocale, Harmonia Mundi, 2003
• Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, Harmonia Mundi, 2003
• Morales, Live @ The V. Sessions, video recording, 2009
• Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, Pentatone, 2010

References[link]

• Philippe Herreweghe Biographies-Orchestre des Champs-Élysées. Accessed February 16, 2007.
• Philippe Herreweghe. allmusic. Accessed February 16, 2007.
• Philippe Herreweghe (born in 1947), choral and orchestral conductor. .be - Belgium Federal Portal. Accessed February 16, 2007.
• Philippe Herreweghe Royal Flemish Philharmonic. Accessed November 17, 2007.