The Cinema Of Alexander Sokurov

Alexander Sokurov's 'Russian Ark' is generally acclaimed as a milestone in cinematography. In this film Sokurov reversed the idea of montage, creating instead the sensation of an uninterrupted flow of time encompassing three centuries of Russia's cultural history through a single, 90-minute take. Yet this film is but one milestone in the work of this versatile director. Since the 1990s, Sokurov's films have had international recognition at film festivals and through foreign distribution. In this, the first English-language book to cover Sokurov's full oeuvre, leading scholars on Sokurov unravel his work on documentaries; his early films and literary adaptations; his trilogy on leaders focussing on the decaying body; his films on passing youth and approaching age; and, of course, 'Russian Ark'. The book also provides samples of the major Russian-language studies of Sokurov's films to provide the reader with an insight into Russian approaches to Sokurov.

One of the last representatives of a brand of serious, high-art cinema, Alexander Sokurov has produced a massive oeuvre exploring issues such as history, power, memory, kinship, death, the human soul, and the responsibility of the artist. Through contextualization and close readings of each of his feature fiction films (broaching many of his documentaries in the process), this volume unearths a vision of Sokurov's films as equally mournful and passionate, intellectual, and sensual, and also identifies in them a powerful, if discursively repressed, queer sensitivity, alongside a pattern of tensions and paradoxes. This book thus offers new keys to understand the lasting and ever-renewed appeal of the Russian director's Janus-like and surprisingly dynamic cinema – a deeply original and complex body of work in dialogue with the past, the present and the future.

Alexander Sokurov's 'Russian Ark' is generally acclaimed as a milestone in cinematography. In this film Sokurov reversed the idea of montage, creating instead the sensation of an uninterrupted flow of time encompassing three centuries of Russia's cultural history through a single, 90-minute take. Yet this film is but one milestone in the work of this versatile director. Since the 1990s, Sokurov's films have had international recognition at film festivals and through foreign distribution. In this, the first English-language book to cover Sokurov's full oeuvre, leading scholars on Sokurov unrave.

Studies the work of Russian motion picture director Aleksandr Sokurov, covering his documentaries, early films and literary adaptations, his trilogy on leaders, and "Russian Ark."

Released in 2002, Russian Ark drew astonished praise for its technique: shot with a Steadicam in one ninety-six-minute take, it presented a dazzling whirl of movement as it followed the Marquis de Custine as he wandered through the vast Winter Palace in St. Petersburg--and through three hundred years of Russian history. This companion to Russian Ark addresses all key aspects of the film, beginning with a comprehensive synopsis, an in-depth analysis, and an account of the production history. Birgit Beumers goes on from there to discuss the work that went into the now-legendary Steadicam shot--which required two thousand actors and three orchestras--and she also offers an account of the film's critical and public reception, showing how it helped to establish director Aleksandr Sokurov as perhaps the leading filmmaker in Russia today.

In Mythopoetic Cinema, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli explores how contemporary European filmmakers treat mythopoetics as a critical practice that questions the constant need to provide new identities, a new Europe, and with it a new European cinema after the fall of the Soviet Union. Mythopoetic cinema questions the perpetual branding of movements, ideas, and individuals. Examining the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Alexander Sokurov, Marina Abramović, and Theodoros Angelopoulos, Ravetto-Biagioli argues that these disparate artists provide a critical reflection on what constitutes Europe in the age of neoliberalism. Their films reflect not only the violence of recent years but also help question dominant models of nation building that result in the general failure to respond ethically to rising ethnocentrism. In close readings of such films as Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002) and Godard's Notre Musique (2004), Ravetto-Biagioli demonstrates the ways in which these filmmakers engage and evaluate the recent reconceptualization of Europe's borders, mythic figures, and identity paradoxes. Her work not only analyzes how these filmmakers thematically treat the idea of Europe but also how their work questions the ability of the moving image to challenge conventional ways of understanding history.

Pino Viscusi, poet and literate lent to cinema, in this fourth essay presents important iconographic material to testimony of his passion for revisiting literary texts, paintings, and movie classics all seen as authentic expression of and recurrent need for the spirituality of the "Russian Soul", since the time of its evangelism.