RUSSIAN ARC

RUSSIAN ARC / Russkiy kovcheg, 2002

Russia, Germany, Japan, Canada, Finland, Denmark | Blu-ray, Color, 99’| Russian, Persian

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov

Cast: Sergey Dreyden, Aleksandra Kulikova, Leonid Mozgovoy, Mariya Kuznetsova

We time travel through the Hermitage Museum under the guidance of a highly skeptical and invisible director and the Marquis de Custine, the author of a 19^th-century account of Russia. We witness a series of events, from the era of Peter and his daughter Catherine to the end of the Romanovs in 1913. This fascinating film consists of a single, continuous take using a camera that glides through the museum, thanks to which we stroll through the history of Russian art and of St. Petersburg. Here, Sokurov accomplishes his dream of capturing the flow of time virtually in a single breath, revealing the lives of many figures of the Russian Monarchy, from Nicholas II to Peter the Great, who are unaware that they are being observed.