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Russian Ark

Russian Ark
Russianark.jpg
DVD cover
Directed by Alexander Sokurov
Produced by Andrey Deryabin
Jens Meurer
Karsten Stöter
Written by Anatoli Nikiforov
Alexander Sokurov
Starring Sergei Dreiden
Narrated by Alexander Sokurov
Music by Sergei Yevtushenko
Cinematography Tilman Büttner
Edited by Stefan Ciupek
Sergei Ivanov
Betina Kuntzsch
Patrick Wilfert
Production
company
Seville Pictures
Distributed by Wellspring Media
Release date
  • 22 May 2002 (2002-05-22) (Cannes)
  • 19 April 2003 (2003-04-19) (Russia)
  • 1 May 2003 (2003-05-01) (Germany)
Running time
96 minutes
Country Russia
Germany
Canada
Finland
Language Russian
Persian
Box office $6,685,748

Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег, Russkij Kovcheg) is a 2002 historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. It was filmed entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum using a single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

An unnamed narrator wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The narrator implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, while at other times they pass unnoticed.

On a winter's day, a small party of men and women arrive by horse-drawn carriage to a minor, side entrance of the Winter Palace. The narrator (whose point of view is always in first-person) meets another spectral but visible outsider, "the European", and follows him through numerous rooms of the palace. Each room manifests a different period of Russian history, but the periods are not in chronological order.

Featured are Peter the Great harassing one of his generals; a spectacular presentation of operas and plays in the era of Catherine the Great; an imperial audience in which Tsar Nicholas I is offered a formal apology by the Shah of Iran for the death of ambassador Alexander Griboedov; the idyllic family life of Tsar Nicholas II's children; the ceremonial changing of the Palace Guard; the museum's director whispering the need to make repairs during the rule of Joseph Stalin; and a desperate Leningrader making his own coffin during the 900-day siege of the city during World War II.


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