In the bleak filmscape of glasnost, The Needle stood out as a black sheep of a movie. The most playful and offbeat of the Soviet films of the period, it contrasted sharply to the mainstream, which was overwhelmed with revisionism of the Stalinist past and nihilistic social criticism.Made in 1988 by a young Kazakh director, Rashid Nugmanov, fresh out of VGIK (the national film ...