The lengthy siege of Leningrad during World War II cost a million civilian lives. In Alexander Sokurov’s documentary, various people – actors, journalists, students, soldiers – read eyewitness accounts about this ‘historic and cultural disaster’, to use Sokurovr’s words.

In Reading Book of Blockade, Alexander Sokurov allows various people – actors, journalists, school children, students, soldiers – to read parts from the famous book by Alexander Adamovich and Daniil Granin about the siege of Leningrad. The city was besieged during World War II by the Germans and the blockade lasted 900 days – from September 1941 to January 1944 – and resulted among other things in great starvation in the city. The long siege is estimated to have cost one million civilian lives, but the Germans did not manage to break the tough Russian resistance.
When reading eyewitness reports of survivors about the bloody battle and the suffering, some readers in Sokurov’s documentary become very emotional. Sokurov says he thinks the events are at least as tragic and terrible as the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the siege was, in his opinion, an ‘historic and cultural disaster’. His film contains stunning archival footage of the siege.

https://nitro.download/view/5D8215CF6E906E5/Aleksandr_Sokurov_-__Chitayem_Blokadnuyu_Knigu__(2009).avi
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/0FD746A903527BA/blokadnaya_kniga.srt

Subtitles:Italian

The post Aleksandr Sokurov – Chitayem Blokadnuyu Knigu AKA Reading Book Of Blockade (2009) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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‘Whispering Pages’ may be the most dimly lit film ever made. Set to the strains of Mahler, this 1993 film takes place in a city whose streets are rarely penetrated by sunlight. Look hard enough and you’ll discover the world of Dostoevsky, whose Crime and Punishment is the source of whatever scant plot exists in Whispering Pages.

Sokurov is one of the most painterly filmmakers alive, but he’s seldom interested in conventionally pretty imagery (or conveying the same grandeur sought by his former mentor, Andrei Tarkovsky). Instead, Sokurov’s images often seem flat and hollow, with the movie screen’s two-dimensionality emphasized rather than disguised. Some of the images in the shadowy Whispering Pages — like the wizened bureaucrat who covers his face with his newspaper or the prostitutes who wrestle in the street — might as well have been made from woodcuts.

Sokurov’s tendency to lengthen and distort the forms of the actors also makes the screen image seem tightly confining. One long scene in Whispering Pages takes place in the sort of desperate little room so often described in 19th-century novels — here, deprivation is incarnated as a bare table, a ratty bed and a few water-stained walls. The sight of it provokes a profound sense of claustrophobia and unease.

2.34GB | 1h 09m | 808×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/58D37045E75A68C/Tikhie_stranitsy_-_Aleksandr_Sokurov_(1994).mkv

Language(s):Russian
Subtitles:English

The post Aleksandr Sokurov – Tikhiye stranitsy aka Whispering Pages (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.