The Anna Akhmatova File

This is an experimental documentary, narrating the life of poetess Anna Akhmatova through photos reading of her memoirs, a variety of documentary materials from Imperial Russia to the regime of N. Khrushchev. Associative montage here is based on the combination of images and the woman's voice, reading text by the poetess. The year in which this film was made is marked by the abundance of Christian motives and the images of "the judgment of God. Certainly in this film of S.Aranovich one can also notice such a tendency. In the first part of it you see the documentary episode showing the distraction of the Cathedral of the Resurrection, soon after that and in the last part of the film the image of some funeral in the church repeatedly appears. To say, the film is framed by 2 funerals. And everywhere in the film you can see images of icons, churches and crosses, the depressed atmosphere is emphasized by Gvaidulina's heavy music. From cinematographic point of view it's worth to point the frequent use of dissolve linking two shots very similar to each other in object and time within them. It seems to express the sense of abnormally prolonged time under Soviet regime.