Artel

Black and white, DIGIBETA
Russia, 2006, 30 min
Section: Documentary Films in Competition

Synopsis

A classic of Russian documentary film he also stamps his typical hallmark on his latest film. Long shots fragmented with fade-outs, a sophisticated composition and the effective use of 35 mm black-and-white film. Loznitsa is able to raise seeming banality to the status of an artistic testimony indirectly reminiscent of the classics of Russian cinematography. On this occasion, he takes his camera along to record an attempt to catch fish in a frozen lake in the middle of the snowy Russian plains. In this harsh natural environment, four young men try to rip from the frozen depths of nature something which will provide them with a livelihood.

About the director

Sergey Loznitsa (b. 1964, Baranovichi, Belarus) graduated from Kiev Polytechnic (1987) and from Moscow’s VGIK (1996). He created the documentary films Today We Are Going to Build a House (1996), The Plaster Dictator (1998), Life, Autumn (1998), The Halt (2000), Settlement (2001) and Portrait (2002), which brought him the Special Jury Mention at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 2003. In 2004 the KVIFF section East of the West screened his film Landscape (2003).