by Chris Marker
06 Jul 03
Le Tombeau d'Alexandre, 1993
[Alexander's Tomb/The Last Bolshevik]
The Last Bolshevik opens to an insightful and relevant excerpted passage from author and critical thinker George Steiner's book, In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture: 'It is not the literal past that rules us [save, possibly, in a biological sense]. It is images of the past.' Composed in the structure of montage (an homage to the characteristic editing and filmic language of pioneering Russian filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Alexander Dovzhenko, and Vsevolod Pudovkin), the film is a series of posthumous video letters (narrated by Michael Pennington) to film essayist Chris Marker's personal friend, mentor, and fellow filmmaker Alexander Ivanovich Medvedkin, examines the trajectory of Medvedkin's life and career from within the context of the evolution of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, and in the process, provides a broader, incisive meditation on the nature of reality, fiction, art, ideology, and history. [Strictly Film School]
11:21:18 PM Google It! 
|
|
