Re‐Viewing a Lost Civilization: Sergei Loznitsa's Revue (2008)

Abstract

W hile there has been a flood of English-language publications on Soviet (and then Russian) cinema since 1985 covering the entire history of that state's film production, with the exception of Dziga Vertov, Soviet and Russian documentary films and filmmakers have remained virtually ignored by both film scholars and film audiences.1 Received wisdom has it that Soviet documentary films became moribund during the Stalin years, as well as during the Thaw and Stagnation periods, and were briefly resuscitated only during the campaign to reclaim the past?the reexamination of Soviet history under Gorbachev.2 Yet as significant as the documentary films of the glasnost-era were, the significance was to be found exclusively in their content; the formal features of most of these films retained all of the hallmarks of earlier Soviet documentaries: a totalizing and tendentious off-screen male voice-over, extended (overly long) shot takes, an absence of nuance and ambiguity, and unimaginative editing.3 With the passing of the Soviet Union, the aesthetics of Soviet