Who is he?
Russian scenarist and filmmaker who has directed close to 40 feature films and 20 short films since the early seventies. Sokurov was profoundly influenced by the cinema of his friend and mentor, the celebrated director Andrei Tarkovsky. Sokurov won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2011 for his adaptation of Goethe’s Faust.
Why is he of interest?
Sokurov’s cinema has largely lived under the shadow of that of Tarkovsky and Sokurov himself has been accused of being inspired too much by his master.
Nevertheless, both his historical position as a filmmaker working in the most tumultuous period of Russian history since the revolution and his recent international collaborations have helped him hold his own ground as an important film artist.
Where to discover him?
His most famous film, and justly so, Russian Ark (2002) is a glide through 300 years of Russian history as staged inside the awe-inspiring interiors of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Filmed as a single, unbroken 96-minute shot, the film is more than a logistical marvel. Imagined as the last breath of the Russian aristocracy before its annihilation by the Bolsheviks, Russian Ark, in its very form, suggests the co-existence in the present of three centuries worth of cultural and historical material.
