Retrospektiv: Aleksandr Sokurov / Retrospective: Aleksandr Sokurov

Retrospective: Aleksandr Sokurov

A sPiriTuAl voicE

Aleksandr Sokurov is unquestionably one of the most important filmmakers alive today. Born in 1951, he made his first film in 1978. Since then he has made over forty films.

As a young film student, Andrei Tarkovsky anointed Sokurov as his spiritual and esthetic heir. Exactly what this has meant for Sokurov is hard to say; his approach to filmmaking is entirely his own, and can only be described as uncompromising. Critics and academics search constantly for adjectives to adequately describe his work: visionary, romantic, serene and feverish, despairing and exultant, to mention a few examples. Sokurov characterizes his work as apolitical, but still it was censured in Soviet times. His obsession with the visual esthetics of filmmaking made the authorities suspicious. Not without reason, he has said, since these esthetics are in fact expressions of spirituality, a moral point of view – and therefore somehow threatening. Surprisingly, even though his films were banned, he never had trouble financing new projects. He worked constantly in Soviet times, but it was not until after perestroika that his work reached the international arena.

Sokurov’s work consistently resists all attempts at categorization. Ever since he made his first film in 1978, Sokurov has been subverting the distinction between fiction and documentary. His international reputation has grown primarily on the basis of his fiction films, first of all mother and son (1996). After seeing the film, Nick Cave wrote:

All of this beauty is given a pace, a timescale dictated by the encroachment of death. Each piece of action, each gesture – slow, plangent, important, sacred – allows the viewer the time to fall under its spell and to be seduced by its powerful and very serious impulses. … Emotions are awakened within us of a sort that cinema hasn’t dealt with for a long time.

This could easily be applied to spiritual voices – from the military

diaries (1995), a 5 hour long series Sokurov made about Russian soldiers deployed to the border of Tadjikistan and Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. He spent months with them, just like he also spent a long period of time with the sailors on board the Russian naval ship based in Murmansk, for the making of the 3 ½ hour long series confession (1998). Although these films describe the everyday life of the subjects, the terms documentary or non-fiction do not begin to describe the film experiences Sokurov offers us. His elegies are like cinematic poems, relying on visual rhythm to tell the story, but they are also portraits of real situations and real people, often well-known public figures (for example Dimitri Shostakovich and Boris Jeltsin). This suggestive technique is also used in his most accessible (and most popular) film russian ark, where a 96 minute swoop through the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg is like a seamless trip through hundreds of years of European cultural history.

His method has been called «an esthetically induced state of trance», which easily could make it sound cold and impersonal, but the opposite is true: This is passionate, compassionate and humanistic filmmaking.

It is safe to say that this is as far from Hollywood as you can get at tiff 2011. It is also the first time such a comprehensive selection of Sokurov’s documentary films are presented in Norway. Take the time to make the acquaintance of a modern master.

CONFESSION

PovinnosT

RUSSiA 1998

REGiSSØREN:

Aleksandr Sokurov er en russisk dokumentar- og spillefilmregissør. Han ble født i Sibir i 1951 og har sin utdannelse fra den prestisjefulle filmskolen VGIK i Moskva. Sokurov har mottatt en rekke priser for arbeidet sitt, blant annet fra filmfestivalene i Berlin og Cannes.

THE diREcTOR:

Aleksandr Sokurov is a Russian director of feature and documentary films. He was born in Siberia in 1951 and graduated from the prestigious film school VGIK in Moscow. Sokurov has collected a number of prizes at the film festivals in Berlin and Cannes.

FilMOGRAPHY (UTvAlG/SElEcTiON):

1981 ALTOVAYA SONATA. DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH / SONATA FOR VIOLA: DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH 1987 AMPIR / EMPIRE (SHORT) 1989 SPASI I SOKHRANI / MADAME BOVARY 1995 DUKHOVNYE GOLOSA / SPIRITUAL VOICES (DOC) 1997 MAT I SYN / MOTHER AND SON 1999 MOLOCH 2003 OTETS I SYN / FATHER AND SON I denne halvdokumentariske filmen følger regissør Aleksandr Sokurov mannskapet ombord på et russisk krigsskip som seiler i det iskalde og mørke Barentshavet. Filmen gir oss et innblikk i hverdagslivet om bord på skipet, fortalt fra kommandørens synsvinkel. Livet der er preget av de daglige rutinene og de evige gjentagelsene. Soving, spising, vasking og atter soving, spising og vasking. Det er ikke noe egentlig plot eller spenningskurve i filmen, ei heller noen vendepunkt eller dramatiske hendelser. De unge guttene befinner seg i et øde og goldt landskap som i filmen blir fargelagt av kommandantens Tsjekhov-sitater og livsanskuelser.

confession er langsom og evig repeterende, akkurat som livet på krigsskipet. Stemningen er monoton og melankolsk. Kommandørens filosofiske betraktninger kretser rundt temaer som tvang og underkastelse, men stiller også spørsmål om hva frihet egentlig innebærer. I det mørke landskapet utforskes livets dypeste mening.

In this semi-documentary Aleksandr Sokurov follows the crew onboard a Russian battle ship sailing in the cold Barents Sea. The film gives us a taste of the everyday life on board the ship from the commander’s point of view. It is characterized by the daily routines and the everlasting repetitions. Sleeping, eating, cleaning, and more sleeping, eating and cleaning. There is no plot or voltage curve, nor a turning point or dramatic events. The young boys are located in a desolate and barren landscape that is colored only by the commander’s quotations of Chekhov and his philosophies on life.

confession is slow and repetitive, just as life on a battle ship. The mood is monotonous and melancholic. The commander’s philosophical reflections revolve around the themes of coercion and submission, along with the question of what freedom really means. In this film, life’s deepest meaning is being explored.