Gosudarstvennyye pokhorony
Opisy(1)
Unique, mostly unseen before, archive footage from March 1953, presents the funeral of Joseph Stalin as the culmination of the dictator’s personality cult. The news of Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, shocked the entire Soviet Union. The burial ceremony was attended by tens of thousands of mourners. We observe every stage of the funeral spectacle, described by Pravda newspaper as “the Great Farewell”, and receive an unprecedented access to the dramatic and absurd experience of life and death under Stalin’s reign.
The film addresses the issue of Stalin’s personality cult as a form of terror-induced delusion. It gives an insight into the nature of the regime and its legacy, still haunting the contemporary world.
(Venice International Film Festival)
Recenzje (1)
The concept of this two-and-a-quarter-hour compiled documentary is simple – using official government footage and without offscreen commentary or music, it reconstructs events in the Soviet Union in the four days following Stalin’s death. However, Loznica uses properly restored archival materials, which originally served as communist propaganda, to emphasise the absurdity of the cult of personality while also uncovering its hollowness. The layered sound design and the repetition of shots that are similar in content show the extent to which veneration of the leader was based on the mechanical reproduction of the meaningless symbols and emblems of Stalinist iconography. 90%
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Galeria (8)
Photo © Atoms & Void / Studio Uljana Kim / Nutprdukce
