Alexandre SOKUROV
Александр СОКУРОВ
Alexandre SOKOUROV
Russia, 1997, 45mn 
Colour, documentary
Peterburgskiy dnevnik. Otkrytie pamyatnika Dostoevskomu
▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪

Петербургский дневник. Открытие памятника Достоевскому

 

 The St. Petersburg Diary. Inauguration of a monument to Dostoevsky

 Journal de Saint-Pétersbourg. Inauguration d'un monument à Dostoïevski

 
Directed by : Alexandre SOKUROV ( Александр СОКУРОВ)
Writing credits : Alexandre SOKUROV ( Александр СОКУРОВ), Aleksandra TUCHINSKAYA (Александра ТУЧИНСКАЯ)
Cinematography : Aleksey FEDOROV (Алексей ФЕДОРОВ)
Sound : Sergey MOSHKOV (Сергей МОШКОВ)
Editing : Leda SEMENOVA (Ледa СЕМЕНОВА)
Produced by : Svetlana VOLOSHINA (Светлана ВОЛОШИНА)
Companies : Studio Nadezhda
 
format : Beta

Plot synopsis
The document cycle “The Diary of St. Petersburg” was planned by Sokurov as a series of memorials to the cultural life of the city, created through the mediums of film and video. The first film, “Inauguration of the Dostoevsky Monument,” is a report on the actual event, which occurs in a place near Vladimirski Square, where there is a church and a street. It was in a corner house here that the great author both lived and died. Now, near his last lodgings, there is a market and so the monument stands “between the market and the temple” as the writer Andrei Bitov says at the ceremonial gathering — the main and only event in the film. This is also true of modern Russian life, according to Bitov. Writers, poets, musicians, scientists, actors, priests, museum–workers, the film crew and the film–maker — they are all present in this collective portrait, among the mass of people who have come to celebrate the writer's memory. This thinker, whose social outlook was deemed incompatible with the official ideology of Soviet Russia not so very long ago, is now a symbol of civic consciousness and the inauguration of the monument to him is seen as an historical event, in which all take part.
Alexandra Tuchinskaya English translation by Tatiana Ussova with assistance from Benjamin Halligan. http://sokurov.spb.ru
 

Selected in the following festivals or events :
- Moscow, St-Petersburg : two faces of Russia, Paris (France), 2010