Imperium

In den Jahren 1970 bis 1973 war ein italienisches Kamerateam in der Sowjetunion unterwegs, um sich ein Bild vom Stand des real existierenden Sozialismus unter dem KP-Generalsekretär Breschnew zu machen. Aus den sechzig Stunden Material, die damals entstanden, hat Loznitsa drei Stunden ausgewählt für einen weiteren seiner großen Archivfilme über das 20. Jahrhundert: IMPERIUM zeigt Szenen von Tallinn im Baltikum bis Taschkent in Usbekistan. Bei den Bildern von damals denkt man unwillkürlich an die Realität von heute, denn Putin will das totalitäre Imperium unter neokolonialen Vorzeichen wiederherstellen. Ein Film der Stunde! (Bert Rebhandl)

Am 1.11. in Anwesenheit von Sergei Loznitsa.

In the 1970s, a small group of Italian cinematographers were permitted to document everyday life across the USSR. Filming under the supervision of Soviet authorities, they nevertheless pursued an independent gaze—one that slipped through the gaps of the propaganda machine. A master in deconstructing archival material, Sergei Loznitsa transforms this unseen footage into an epic portrait of a failed utopia: a world of almost unimaginable scale whose collapse continues to resonate in Russia and beyond with devastating consequences. As always, Loznitsa avoids commentary, allowing the images themselves to reveal the layers of meaning and ambiguity they have accumulated over time. Focusing primarily on the diverse cultures and ethnic minorities of the vast country, IMPERIUM is bookended by images of Moscow and Leningrad as imperial centres. This structure makes the film’s postcolonial dimension all the more palpable, while questioning the mainstream image of the Soviet empire as a uniform universe. In fact, Loznitsa points to quite the opposite: the immanent cracks within the system, the subtle gaps between the private and the public, between the staged and the real—those liminal spaces where life evades power and control. (Evgeny Gusyatinskiy)

Sergei Loznitsa: TODAY WE ARE GOING TO BUILD A HOUSE (1996, K, KO-REGIE), LIFE, AUTUMN (1998, K, KO-REGIE), THE TRAIN STOP (2000, K), THE SETTLEMENT (2001), PORTRAIT (2002, K), LANDSCAPE (2003), FAC- TORY (2004, K), BLOCKADE (2005), ARTEL (2006, K), REVUE (2008), MY JOY (2010), IN THE FOG (2012), MAIDAN (2014), THE EVENT (2015), AUSTERLITZ (2016), A GENTLE CREATURE (2017), DONBASS (2018), THE TRIAL (2018), STATE FUNERAL (2019), BABI YAR. CONTEXT (2021), MR. LANDSBERGIS (2021), THE NA- TURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION (2022), THE KIEV TRIAL (2022), THE INVASION (2024), TWO PROSECUTORS (2025)