Sergey Loznitsa Retrospective Online
Got this press release from Andrea Pruchová from DocAlliance this morning – concerning an early super-generous xmas gift to all of us documentary fans:
His films tend to attract general attention. While festival juries churn out awards, as seen in Cannes, Karlovy Vary and at Jihlava IDFF, viewers are charmed by the quiet pace of his poetic images he has recently employed to capture the revolutionary events at the MAIDAN square in Kiev. Sergei Loznitsa, director of the remarkable feature films My Joy and In the Fog, now receives another honour for the first time; the launch of his online world film retrospective. Ten documentaries by Sergei Loznitsa, including his yet unpublished film master class, are available from December 1 to 14 at the DAFilms.com portal for free.
A native of Ukraine, director Sergei Loznitsa is an exceptional personality in the field of film. His documentary as well as feature films are well received both by critics and by viewers, winning a whole range of awards at leading world festivals in Cannes, Toronto, Paris and Karlovy Vary among others. His studies at a technical university and his experience in the field of development of artificial intelligence contrast with the poetical language employed by the director to follow film narratives that are often set in Eastern Europe and traditional Russia with patience and in visually impressive detail.
“When you start working on a new film, it’s like working on a scientific theory from scratch. It’s only up to you how far into the corner you will push yourself in the process of creation. (…) But everything always starts from the very beginning. If you succeed, you will never find yourself in a dead end. Film is a theorem that has to arrive at a final point,” says the director about his creative process.
The first online film retrospective of Loznitsa’s works offers nine documentary films made since 2000 to viewers around the world. Moreover, it presents a world premiere of Loznitsa‘s yet unpublished master class delivered by the director to the viewers of the Polish Planete Doc Film Festival in the spring of 2014. Entitled “Authenticity and the Phenomenon of Cinema“, it provides a unique chance to learn about the director’s original notion of the film medium.
The viewers should definitely not miss those films presented in the retrospective that have won several prestigious film awards. The black-and-white ARTEL (2006), awarded at Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in 2007, employs a hypnotizing aesthetic to capture the everyday life of a Russian village which might seem banal at first sight, rendering ordinary activities such as fishing as a surprising and internal struggle.
An unconventional look into age-old traditions maintained even in modern society is introduced in the popular film THE MIRACLE OF SAINT ANTHONY (2012) following the ritual of consecrating animals in the north of Portugal. On the other hand, humour and irony employed by Loznitsa to comment on Soviet political propaganda are brought to the retrospective by the film collage REVUE (2008), revealing the mythology of the communist past based on the visual materials of Soviet propaganda of the 1950s and 1960s.
The online film retrospective of Sergei Loznitsa includes the following films:
The Train Stop (2000, 25´)
Settlement (2001, 80´)
Portrait (2002, 28´)
Landscape (2003, 60´)
The Factory (2004, 30´)
Artel (2006, 30´)
Revue (2008, 83´)
The Miracle of Saint Anthony (2012, 40´)
Letter (2013, 20´)
Special release of Sergei Loznitsa’s master class: “Authenticity and the Phenomenon of Cinema” (2014, 90’)
Go to the website below where you will also find a personal greeting text from the director. ENJOY!
