Plot
The Romanovs' Last Photograph tells the story of the Romanov sisters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, in the hours leading up to their execution in 1918. The girls share their hopes, fears, and aspirations and they discuss existential themes, such as the frailty of human existence. They try to live their normal lives under constant dread of being caught on the wrong side of the Russian Revolution.
Keywords: bolshevik, brother-sister-relationship, communism, czar, czar-nicholas-ii-of-russia, czarina, czarina-alexandra-of-russia, death, dog, family-relationships
What is the historical truth? God knows.
What is the historical truth? God knows.
Plot
Lt. John Boles, a one-legged soldier, is assisting the White Russians in the Russian Arctic during World War I. He finds himself in Archangel, a crystalline city of spires and domes, inhabited by some very confused people. Boles loves Iris, who is dead, and meets Veronkha, whom he mistakes for Iris. But Veronkha is already married to Philbin, who forgets he is married to Veronkha. Veronkha thinks Boles is Philbin...
Keywords: 1910s, absurd-comedy, absurdism, adultery, aerodrome, airplane, allegory, amnesia, amputee, archangel-russia
A Tragedy of the Great War
Veronkha: He struck that hateful head of yours and drew blood, but not enough!
Danchuk: I've heard of ghosts. Good ghosts who wonder the battlefields at night, guiding soldiers out of danger. You can see their omens everywhere. Omens, warnings of stray bullets and lurking enemies. If I was such a ghost, I would stay so close to you, you could feel my breath on your cheek.
Philbin: [entering house where a slaughter has taken place] What a mess.::Geza: You saved my life!::Philbin: That's nice. Your father said he'd drive me to the aerodrome. Have you seen him?::Geza: He's dead!::Philbin: [looks down] I can see that. Nothing seems to be going right today.::Geza: My father died a coward. Didn't he?::Philbin: I believe there's a reason for everything. For instance, someone shaved off my mustache while I slept last night. What could that mean?
[first title card]::Title Card: The Northernmost tip of old Imperial Russia. Winter of 1919. The Great War has been over for three months, but no one has remembered to tell those who remain in Archangel.
[first lines]::Lt. John Boles: Goodbye Iris.
[last lines]::Lt. John Boles: My name is John Boles. I'm in Archangel. Fighting a war. I'm trying to find the woman I love. Iris!
Narrator: On the march to the front, Danchuk imparts to Lt. Boles her beliefs about darkness. She believes that darkness can be kept - a black, juicy harvest actually plucked from the night. That darkness can be sculpted into huge furry vaults and complex corridors. That little piles of darkness can serve as useful road signs for the weary traveller, or for anyone who swims in that dusky fluid.
Plot
Lt. John Boles, a one-legged soldier, is assisting the White Russians in the Russian Arctic during World War I. He finds himself in Archangel, a crystalline city of spires and domes, inhabited by some very confused people. Boles loves Iris, who is dead, and meets Veronkha, whom he mistakes for Iris. But Veronkha is already married to Philbin, who forgets he is married to Veronkha. Veronkha thinks Boles is Philbin...
Keywords: 1910s, absurd-comedy, absurdism, adultery, aerodrome, airplane, allegory, amnesia, amputee, archangel-russia
A Tragedy of the Great War
Veronkha: He struck that hateful head of yours and drew blood, but not enough!
Danchuk: I've heard of ghosts. Good ghosts who wonder the battlefields at night, guiding soldiers out of danger. You can see their omens everywhere. Omens, warnings of stray bullets and lurking enemies. If I was such a ghost, I would stay so close to you, you could feel my breath on your cheek.
Philbin: [entering house where a slaughter has taken place] What a mess.::Geza: You saved my life!::Philbin: That's nice. Your father said he'd drive me to the aerodrome. Have you seen him?::Geza: He's dead!::Philbin: [looks down] I can see that. Nothing seems to be going right today.::Geza: My father died a coward. Didn't he?::Philbin: I believe there's a reason for everything. For instance, someone shaved off my mustache while I slept last night. What could that mean?
[first title card]::Title Card: The Northernmost tip of old Imperial Russia. Winter of 1919. The Great War has been over for three months, but no one has remembered to tell those who remain in Archangel.
[first lines]::Lt. John Boles: Goodbye Iris.
[last lines]::Lt. John Boles: My name is John Boles. I'm in Archangel. Fighting a war. I'm trying to find the woman I love. Iris!
Narrator: On the march to the front, Danchuk imparts to Lt. Boles her beliefs about darkness. She believes that darkness can be kept - a black, juicy harvest actually plucked from the night. That darkness can be sculpted into huge furry vaults and complex corridors. That little piles of darkness can serve as useful road signs for the weary traveller, or for anyone who swims in that dusky fluid.
The Bolsheviks, originally alsoBolshevists (Russian: большевики, большевик (singular); IPA: [bəlʲʂɨˈvʲik]; derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903.
The Bolsheviks were the majority faction in a crucial vote, hence their name. They ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which would later in 1922 become the chief constituent of the Soviet Union.
The Bolsheviks, founded by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov, were by 1905 a mass organization consisting primarily of workers under a democratic internal hierarchy governed by the principle of democratic centralism, who considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary working class of Russia. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism. Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky commonly used the terms "Bolshevism" and "Bolshevist" after his exile from the Soviet Union to differentiate between what he saw as true Leninism and the state and party as they existed under Stalin's leadership.
Chris Marker (born 29 July 1921) is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée (1962), A Grin Without a Cat (1977), Sans Soleil (1983) and AK (1985), an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Marker is often associated with the Left Bank Cinema movement that occurred in the late 1950s and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Henri Colpi and Armand Gatti.
His friend and sometime collaborator Alain Resnais has called him "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man." Film theorist Roy Armes has said of him: "Marker is unclassifiable because he is unique...The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker."
Marker was born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve on July 29, 1921. Always elusive about his past and known to refuse interviews and not allow photographs to be taken of him, his place of birth is highly disputed. Some sources and Marker himself claim that he was born in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Other sources say he was born in Belleville, Paris, and others, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The 1949 edition of Le Cœur Net specifies his birthday as July 22. Film critic David Thomson has stated: "Marker told me himself that Mongolia is correct. I have since concluded that Belleville is correct- but that does not spoil the spiritual truth of Ulan Bator." When asked about his secretive nature, Marker has said "My films are enough for them (the audience)."