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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783207039 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect, Limited |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2016 |
| Series: | Kinosputnik |
| Pages: | 112 |
| Product dimensions: | 9.10(w) x 6.50(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Aleksandr Sokurov: Russian Ark
By Birgit Beumers
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2016 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-703-9
CHAPTER 1
Introduction and production history
– Here, shooting in a single take is an achievement in formal terms, but more than that it is a tool with the aid of which a specific artistic task can be resolved. It's just a tool.
– What is this tool called?
– Breathing. One has to live a specific amount of time in a single breath [...]. This idea was for a film shot, as it were, 'in a single breath'.
(Sokurov in 'Press Release' 2002: 5)
Most writing on Russian Ark begins or ends with a comment on the technical feat achieved with this film. Let me therefore also begin here with some technical aspects. Above all, we must remind ourselves of the context: although digital technologies were available in 2000–01, when Aleksandr Sokurov embarked on this project, they were not widespread. Cell phones had just about saturated 20 per cent of the world population, some half of the population owned a computer, and the DVD (first retailed in 1997) had just learnt to spin. Digital cameras had entered retail in the mid-1990s. To achieve the feat of recording 90 minutes of footage in one take, digital technology was, however, the only option, because standard reels of 35mm film come in at 305 metres and only run for about twelve minutes. Whilst the documentary and feature film-maker Sokurov was dreaming of this 'single-breath shot', technologies continued to develop. But even in 2000, recording digital footage onto a platform in a single shot was impossible. Uncompressed recording on HD takes up a lot of space on a hard drive, and in 2000 the world was still counting in megabytes rather than gigabytes, never mind terabytes.
Through his work with German producers, Sokurov had contacts in Berlin, where the company Kopp Media is based; they were HD specialists and had developed a hard-disk recording system for a Compact 24p High Definition camera (Sony HDW-F900) with the visual quality and portability sufficient to make a feature film. Such an HD camera (the system that Sony calls CineAlta) could record 46 minutes onto a single tape. However, a company called Director's Friend in Cologne then developed a hard-disk recording system that was portable and had a stable battery, so that it could record 100 minutes of uncompressed image in one take ('Press Release' 2002: 10). And that was what Sokurov needed.
Sokurov now needed a cameraman who had experience with a Steadicam. Sokurov had tended to work with the same cameramen – Sergei Iurizditskii and Aleksandr Burov – and even take the camera himself in such films as Telets/Taurus (2000) and Solntse/The Sun (2005). Yet he needed the expertise of the best man with the Steadicam, Tilman Büttner, who had proven himself on such films as Lola rennt/Run Lola Run (Tykwer, 1997) and Absolute Giganten/Gigantic (Schipper, 1998).
Büttner embarked on the project with a great deal of technical expertise, but little knowledge of the historical background or Sokurov's filmography (as is evident from his interview in 'Proekt' in 2002). He ordered a special Steadicam armature in Canada (the model 'Tilman Büttner #1') that could be mounted on a strap so that the weight of the device could be placed on the hips. The camera weighed nine kilograms, while the overall weight carried by the cameraman, including the hard disk, came to about 35 kilos.
In this way, it had become technically possible to record 90 minutes of uninterrupted footage onto a digital system: 'the first entirely unedited, single screen, single take full-length feature film; the longest-ever Steadicam sequence, the first ever uncompressed HD movie, recorded onto a portable hard-disk system, rather than 35mm or tape' ('Press Release' 2002: 9).
But these technical feats alone were not enough. Sokurov's film was shot in the Hermitage Museum, home to one of the richest and most precious art collections in the world. Any film crew allowed inside has to operate to a high level of care for the objects and numerous restrictions applied. Sokurov's good and established relationship with the Hermitage's director, Mikhail Piotrovskii, certainly helped. Sokurov had previously shot several educational films in the Hermitage and also premiered his films in the Hermitage Theatre (converted for this purpose to a cinema). His film Rober. Schastlivaia zhizn'/Hubert Robert: A Fortunate Life (1996), produced by Hermitage Bridge Studio with Andrei Deriabin, is a fine example of Sokurov's interest in the filming of artworks on the one hand, and his collaboration with the museum on the other.
Moreover, Sokurov mounted an additional challenge for himself: filming in the Hermitage meant that the museum would have to close for the day of the shooting. He chose the shortest day of the year – 23 December – for the shoot, when daylight during the black polar nights of St Petersburg was available only for a few hours (the southern solstice fell on 21 December in 2001). Thus the film crew had a limited amount of time for rehearsals on location; needed a good supply of lighting; had to find a way of getting actors, crew and extras into the Hermitage; had to restore some of the historical rooms to their original state (including removing paintings); and had a few other feats to accomplish.
The crew had to track a path for the camera totalling 1500 metres in length, through 36 halls, rooms and galleries (some sources say 33, which excludes some rooms where characters merely pass through) containing 200 lighting devices. The 65 costume assistants from Lenfil'm, the Mariinsky Theatre and other theatres in the city had to dress the 862 actors and extras (101 solo, 280 in groups, 481 in crowd scenes) in a total of 360 costumes, including 45 ball-gowns and 120 uniforms. Meanwhile, three make-up supervisors and their 50 assistants from the film studio, theatres and television had to disperse three buckets of powder and arrange 100 wigs (made from five kilograms of natural and six kilograms of artificial hair), whilst 22 assistant directors coordinated the movement of the crowds and actors. Three orchestras were involved in the shoot, including that of the Mariinsky, conducted by the maestro Valerii Gergiev, who flew in from a concert in New York the night before the filming.
CHRONICLE OF A FILM
15 April 2001 – Casting begins
22–23 April – Technical test with Tilman Büttner in the Hermitage
19 June – Sokurov meets with Gergiev, who agrees to conduct the mazurka with the Mariinsky Orchestra September – Meeting with Aleksandr Golutva (Deputy Minister of Culture)
5 October – Meeting with producer Andrei Deriabin and St Petersburg's governor, Vladimir Iakovlev, to include the project into events for the 300th anniversary of the city in 2003
5 November – Second rehearsal with Büttner, including actors; plan for lighting
20 October – Rehearsals begin between Lenfil'm and Hermitage (closed on Mondays)
18 November – Daily rehearsals start with four assistant directors: Sergei Razhuk (ball, Persian envoys with the tsar, and scenes on staircases); El'vira Krupina (Peter I, Nicholas II); Tat'iana Komarova (Catherine and children in Pavilion Hall); Aleksandr Maslov (Hermitage Theatre and Siege)
15 November – St Petersburg's vice-governor arranges special access for the film crew to the Hermitage, and orders the closure of Palace Square for 23 December
24 November – Equipment arranged and tested
30 November – Crew meeting
5 December – Meeting of Sokurov and Gergiev
6 December – Arrival of the German team, including producer Karsten Stöter
10 December – Rehearsal in the Hermitage, including Mikhail Piotrovskii
13 December – Film crew arrive at the Hermitage
22 December
7.00 Set up the decors along the entire track of the shooting. Bring in costumes
8.00–12.00 Film crew (30 people) and actors (seven people) enter for rehearsal inside the Hermitage. Dismantling of paintings in the Portrait Gallery of the Romanovs
12.00–21.00 Set-up of lighting and other equipment along the track
21.00–22.00 Costume assistants and make-up assistants (50 people) enter into the Hermitage
22.00-1.00 Actors enter for crowd scenes (770 people)
23 December
1.00 – Technical crew enter
1.00–2.00 Make-up and dressing for crowd scenes; preparation for rehearsal
2.00–3.00 Rehearsal on the Jordan Staircase
3.00–5.00 Rehearsal in St George Hall (300 people)
5.00–6.00 Rehearsal in Nicholas Hall
6.00–9.00 Coffee break for crowd scenes and film crew
9.00–10.00 Crowd scene actors move into halls
10.00–11.30 Movement of film crew and actors along the shooting track
12.00–14.00 SHOOT
14.00–15.30 Admission of journalists through Saltykov entrance (60 people) and press conference in the Hermitage Theatre
14.00–21.00 Removal of equipment
31 December – Start of post-production
10 January–3 February 2002 – Sound recordings
(adapted from 'Proekt' 2002)
As Svetlana Proskurina (in Sirivlia 2002) records, different layers of sound (noise, voices, music) were added in the post-production process, as (following widespread practice in Russian cinema) no original sound was recorded during the single take on 23 December. The images were mastered in post-production, mostly adding colour filters to tint certain scenes.
There is not a single cut in the original film. Yet when it reached distribution, Russian Ark was largely screened from 35mm prints, which means that the projectionist would splice the separate reels together and mount the entire feature onto a platter. In 2003, cinemas were not yet equipped with the technology for digital projection, which was emerging at the time. Bristol's Watershed – part of the Europa Cinemas network – was one of the few venues capable of digital projection, and screened the film every weekend over three months from April to June 2003, with special introductions for each screening. Having first screened the film from 35mm, Watershed struck a deal with the UK distributor, Artificial Eye, for the Digibeta tape to be projected from a Digital Projection Highlite 5000gv projector with a Texas Instruments chip (Minns 2003), making it one of the few cinemas to show the film digitally.
As such, the technical feat – the take in one breath – that so many reviewers had commented upon was fragmented during the projection. The aim for perfection during the shooting – with the crowd management and the flubs only partly corrected in postproduction, as Jose Alaniz has demonstrated (Alaniz 2011) – leaves us wondering about the purpose of this high-tech exercise. Sokurov had outdone Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky in the length of shot; he had opposed Dziga Vertov's and Sergei Eisenstein's montage technique (even if only on a technical level), because his distortion of historical space and time is just as manipulative as that of the great masters in Bronenosets Potemkin/The Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925) or Oktiabr'/October (Eisenstein, 1927); and he had achieved what Alfred Hitchcock in Rope (1948) could only pretend to do, namely that the camera never left the shooting location.
This ambitious project was conceived by a film-maker with a huge body of work already attached to his name, with an international reputation (festivals at Berlin, Cannes, Karlovy Vary) and a track record of international co-productions. It was produced by Andrei Deriabin, the St Petersburg-based head of Hermitage Bridge Studio, a subdivision of the Hermitage that focused on work with the museum; by Jens Meurer of Egoli Tossell, who had wide-ranging experience in Russia and on documentary films; and by Karsten Stöter, who had previously worked with Meurer. Sokurov's German connection also included the highly influential producer Thomas Kufus, who had produced Molokh/Moloch (1999) and Otets i syn/Father and Son (2003).
Sokurov's background is in history, and this is well reflected not only in his early documentary films – including films about artistic figures such as Dmitrii Shostakovich, Fedor Chaliapin, Andrei Tarkovsky, Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaia, and political figures such as Boris Yeltsin – but also in his fiction films, especially the trilogy about the dictators Hitler (Moloch), Lenin (Taurus) and Hirohito (The Sun). Yet Sokurov is never interested in presenting historical facts, but in the personal behind the historical, political or artistic figure. This is an important aspect of his choice of historical and contemporary figures to populate the Hermitage in Russian Ark, which is ultimately subjective.
His interest in art has manifested itself in his film style, as is evident from the slow-moving camera, which often captures scenes in complete stillness. This can be seen in the opening sequence of Mat' i syn/Mother and Son (1997), which opens with a still scene that appears to be painted, but gradually becomes animated as the characters begin to breathe and move. Moreover, Sokurov makes extensive use of anamorphous lenses to distort the image (Alaniz 2008), giving it a panoramic vision and a painterly quality. However, Sokurov is not only preoccupied with the painterly quality of his cinematic shots, but also displays a keen interest in the still, frozen and immobile nature of still life, as reflected in his frequent citation of, or inspiration by, painterly compositions. Especially important here is that the composition of paintings highlights the morbidity of the present, something Sokurov observed in Hubert Robert's ruin paintings, which almost seem to come to life through his camera in the documentary Hubert Robert (1996), as well as in Elegiia dorogi/Elegy of a Voyage (2001), about the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. For Sokurov, the medium of cinema is inferior to the medium of art; as such, the choice of museum and artworks, paintings and sculptures for Russian Ark is not accidental. As Sokurov has said: 'The art of cinema does not exist. Cinema is secondary' (Grashchenkova 1997: 82); 'If film as art exists, then the real problem resides in optics' (Sokurov in Sedofsky 2001).
Therefore, the second chapter, on contexts, pursues several different lines. First, I discuss the role of the Marquis de Custine as a guide through the Hermitage and commentator on Russia's history and culture; his views on the relationship between Russia and Europe are informed by the important debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers that erupted precisely around the time of his visit to Russia in 1839. Second, I explore the role of the location: the ark that contains Russia's history and culture is a building that has two functions, and indeed two designations: the Winter Palace as the site of the tsars' residence, reflecting the history of imperial life; and the Hermitage as the building that contains the art collection and is one of the largest museums in the world.
The third chapter, offering a close reading of the film, follows the camera in Russian Ark in a scene-by-scene, or rather room-by-room, analysis. The fourth chapter explores the film's main themes and motifs, building on the binaries and duplicities inherent in the film's construction. The final chapter covers the reception of Russian Ark in the press and the debates it initiated in scholarship. In the conclusion, I return to the issue of Sokurov's relationship to visual art, and take a look at the relationship to cultural heritage that Sokurov offers in Francofonia (2015), a film about another museum: the Louvre.
CHAPTER 2Contexts
THE MARQUIS DE CUSTINE
'Russia has no past [...] but the future and space may serve as a pasture for the most ardent imaginings.'
Astolphe Marquis de Custine, 22 July 1839.
(Buss 1991: 97)
The journey through the Winter Palace and the Hermitage is a journey through time and space, who visited Russia in 1839 and who is performed by the invisible Narrator, who speaks with Sokurov's voice, and the Stranger, Astolphe Marquis de Custine (played by Sergei Dreiden [Dontsov]). History unfolds chronologically, starting with Peter the Great and ending with Nicholas II, and yet Custine's status in this chronology shifts. In the state apartments, he passes almost unnoticed; meanwhile, in the rooms with the collections of European art, populated by contemporary visitors and people from different centuries, he is visible and converses with the crowd; later on, he is ushered out of the museum.
At the film's start, he talks of being lost, not knowing where he is and not recognizing the location. He is surprised that he speaks fluent Russian. His temporal dislocation is enhanced by his dress – he wears a black, nineteenth-century suit – very much like the Custine who donned 'as much of a court costume as he could assemble from his travel wardrobe' (Kennan 1972: 56) for his first visit to the Winter Palace, where he attended the wedding and subsequent ball of the tsar's eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, to Maximilian de Beauharnais, Third Duke of Leuchtenberg, on 14 July 1839 (Buss 1991: 60). Custine's ship had docked in Kronstadt on 10 July 1839, and his attendance at the wedding comes before his formal introduction to the court. On the day, he feels terribly out of place, especially when his shoe is caught in a carriage door and drags along the steps leading up to the Hermitage, to a ball where he knows nobody (Kennan 1972: 57).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Aleksandr Sokurov: Russian Ark by Birgit Beumers. Copyright © 2016 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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