Sergei Loznitsa Talks about His Work on Archival Documentary Films
“Archival frames, which I use in my films, are of exceptional value and I believe that they depict topics of extreme importance to current society”, comments Sergei Loznitsa. Three times awarded at Cannes Film Festival, the director received his latest award (“Golden Eye”) from this festival for his latest work “Babi Yar. Context” (2021), presented at this year European Film Forum “Scanorama” and using meticulously restored and brilliantly assembled archival footage of Nazi troops massacring over 30,000 Jews over a three-day period in September 1941 in Ukraine.
During his masterclass the director will present his work on archival documentary films. Revealing the creative process may benefit both, film directors and creative teams as well as auteur cinema lovers.
“It is a question of humanity – what is a human being, where a human starts and how the influence by others conflicts or not with one’s personal manifestation. Because what the human does is dictated directly by the context and the environment of his existence”.
The content of the masterclass may be relevant not only to documentary and feature film creators, but also to educated auteur film lovers as the director’s films masterfully question the post-truth reality of soviet and post-soviet states, lost in dubious truths, forgotten memory and fake identities.
Sergey Loznitsa in 1997 graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow, where he studied feature filmmaking. He has been making films since 1996, and by now has directed 23 award-winning documentaries and 4 fiction films. Loznitsa’s feature debut “My Joy” (2010) premiered in the main competition at the Festival de Cannes, and was followed by the feature film “In the Fog” (2012), which was awarded by the FIPRESCI prize at the 65th Festival de Cannes. In 2017, Sergei Loznitsa presented his third feature “A Gentle Creature” in the competition of the Festival de Cannes. In 2018, Loznitsa received the prize for Best Directing of the Un Certain Regard section of Festival de Cannes for his fourth feature film, “Donbass”. In 2013 founded a film production company “Atoms & Void”.
Loznitsa’s feature-length documentary “Maidan” (2014), the chronicles of the Ukrainian revolution, had its world premiere at a Séance Special of Festival de Cannes. His subsequent feature-length documentaries, “The Event” (2015), “Austerlitz” (2016), “The Trial” (2018) and “State Funeral” (2019) were presented at the Special Screenings of the Venice Film Festival.
In 2021, the documentary “Babi Yar. Context” was awarded the L’oeil d’Or Special Jury Prize in Cannes.
Loznitsa continues to work both in documentary and feature genres.
The event is being held in Lithuanian (translation from Russian).
The event took place on November 7th.