Testimony (1987 film)

Testimony is a 1987 British independent musical drama film directed by Tony Palmer and starring Ben Kingsley, Sherry Baines and Robert Stephens. The film is based on the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) as dictated in the book Testimony (edited by Solomon Volkov, ) and filmed in Panavision.

Cast

• Ben Kingsley as Dmitri Shostakovich
• Sherry Baines as Nina Shostakovich
• Magdalen Asquith as Galya Shostakovich
• Mark Asquith as Maxim Shostakovich
• Terence Rigby as Joseph Stalin
• Ronald Pickup as Mikhail Tukhachevsky
• John Shrapnel as Andrei Zhdanov
• Robert Reynolds as Brutus
• Vernon Dobtcheff as Gargolovsky
• Colin Hurst as Stalin's Secretary
• Joyce Grundy as Keke Geladze
• Mark Thrippleton as Young Joseph Stalin
• Liza Goddard as The English Humanist
• Peter Woodthorpe as Alexander Glazunov
• Robert Stephens as Vsevolod Meyerhold
• William Squire as Aram Khachaturian
• Murray Melvin as The Film Editor
• Robert Urquhart as The Journalist
• Christopher Bramwell as Vanya
• Brook Williams as H. G. Wells
• Marita Phillips as Madam Lupinskaya

Music

• London Philharmonic Orchestra
• Leader: David Nolan
• Conductor: Rudolf Barshai
• The Golden Age Singers
• Chorus Master: Simon Preston
• Chilingirian Quartet

• Margaret Fingerhut
• Yuzuko Horigome
• Felicity Palmer
• Howard Shelley
• John Shirley-Quirk

Awards

• Winner of the gold medal for Best Drama – New York International Film Festival
• Winner of the Fellini Prize – UNESCO
• Winner of the Critics Prize – São Paulo International Film Festival

Further reading

• Volkov, Solomon: Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator; Knopf 2004.
• Fay, Laurel: Shostakovich versus Volkov: Whose Testimony? – The Russian Review, vol. 39 no. 4 October 1980 pp. 484–493.

External links