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 Soloists 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.
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