State Funeral

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died on March 5, 1953. His death took place out of sight, but its aftermath could not have been more visible. From reams of existing footage of this very public spectacle, most of which unseen and now painstakingly restored, Sergei Loznitsa has forged a heady distillation of his STATE FUNERAL as seamless as it is staggering. Starting from the first news of the dictator’s demise, the film moves through each stage of proceedings until his body is installed in Red Square, narrowing and expanding its focus and shifting between black and white and color with utter fluidity. The citizens of the different Socialist Republics gather around public speaker systems, wreaths are laid across the nation, dignitaries fly in, and crowds throng through the House of Unions to pay their respects. So much ceremony, so many repeated gestures and words, history as redundancy, as different collections of bodies that still always behave the same. Seen in their restored state, all these images of mournful gazes and tear-streaked faces are so perfect that they could have wandered in from some classic melodrama and, in a sense, they have. For what else is the relentless celebration of a man who killed millions than some brazenly breathtaking fiction? (James Lattimer)

In presence of Sergei Loznitsa.