Abstracts
Russia on Edge: Reclaiming the Periphery in Contemporary Russian Culture
Interdisciplinary Workshop, 11-12 December 2009 (CRASSH, University of Cambridge)
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Queen Mary, University of London
Centre and Periphery in the Documentary Films of Sergei Loznitsa
Russian documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has made a number of films which focus on the unnamed provinces either at a non-specified time, or, in the case of his most recent film, Predstavlenie (2008), in the 1950s. This paper is an attempt to look at the reasons why Loznitsa has so emphasised the provincial, and peripheral, and will argue that this is a question not only of ideological focus, but also a principle of his poetics and a textual approach whereby the apparently insignificant and irrelevant is made significant. Key to this is the reassessment of the foreground-background relation enabled by the use of the long take, and the use of peripheral sound. The effect is a compellingly complementary nexus between message and manner which stands out in contemporary Russian documentary.