1981, 80 min., b/w
LSDF

directors: S. Aranovich, A. Sokurov
scenario: B. Dobrodeev
camera: Y. Alexandrov, Y. Lebedev
sound: E. Belyaeva
consultants: K. Karaev, S. Khentova, M. Yakubo

This film about the great composer Dmitri Shostakovitch was initially begun by the St. Petersburg film–maker Semion Aranovitch. Sokurov was invited to participate in the editing of archive footage for the film. But it was Sokurov who was to create the composition of the film and defined its emotional mood.

The selection and editing of the authentic documentary material took the film out of a narrow biographical framework and found instead a broad historical context. Sokurov composed a tragic requiem to the destiny of the artist, whose creative work developed and found fruition invevitably opposing itself to the state ideology. This is a film about the triumph of powerful art and about the defeat and death of a weak man burdened by his gift.

This biography of Shostakovitch, which includes the most acute moments of social life in Soviet Russia, had become the foundation for a reflection and an overview of the tragic destiny of the artist, always alone but not separated from his epoch and his homeland.

Alexandra Tuchinskaya

Translated by Olga Abramenko with assistance from Benjamin Halligan.