sergey loznitsa. portraits of coldness and death mikel zatarain
A place where no-one’s ever been. It’s probably a bit of land that’s always been forgotten. Both communism and capitalism had forgotten about this far-off land. Where nothing but the cold sound of the wind can be heard. Moving the branches of the trees, throwing wooden fences onto the ground, making waves in the river ... Post-Soviet neighbours who live outside the world, sleeping at night in train stations, the hard work of life on the steppes, all mixed with alcoholic singing, and so on.
They drag a pig squealing to its death throes. We see the countryside from on top a tractor, the pig’s squeals blend in with the tractor’s racket creating a painful, cacophonous sound. Suddenly, the camera turns 90° horizontally. A moment of silence. The pig’s death written down by a camera movement.
That really is writing with a camera! A sense closely bound to a camera movement. Astruc got there before Camera-Stylo. Like Hitchcock, Ford, Lang and others like them.
And, in the same way, that countryside’s death. A way of understanding the world, taking it in, which is about to be lost. Time in a cycle, in nature, in life. And not our cities’ lineal time.
In Portrait , on the other hand, Loznitsa stops times, freezes it ... In this way, in the way that Roland Barthes’ allegory related photography with death, accelerating a world’s last days or death of being in the world in a certain way.
One of the main jobs the cinema has to do, reminding us of things. Solving the cruelty of the passing of time, in other words. Death is no more than time’s victory.
My Joy, with death always in charge in the porous fiction of reality, the sound of the cold wind always audible. Because this “film maker of sounds” has the sound of the cold wind in all his films using the leaves on the trees, whitened countryside and contemplating eyes to create a poetic reading of the world.
www.loznitsa.com
They drag a pig squealing to its death throes. We see the countryside from on top a tractor, the pig’s squeals blend in with the tractor’s racket creating a painful, cacophonous sound. Suddenly, the camera turns 90° horizontally. A moment of silence. The pig’s death written down by a camera movement.
That really is writing with a camera! A sense closely bound to a camera movement. Astruc got there before Camera-Stylo. Like Hitchcock, Ford, Lang and others like them.
And, in the same way, that countryside’s death. A way of understanding the world, taking it in, which is about to be lost. Time in a cycle, in nature, in life. And not our cities’ lineal time.
In Portrait , on the other hand, Loznitsa stops times, freezes it ... In this way, in the way that Roland Barthes’ allegory related photography with death, accelerating a world’s last days or death of being in the world in a certain way.
One of the main jobs the cinema has to do, reminding us of things. Solving the cruelty of the passing of time, in other words. Death is no more than time’s victory.
My Joy, with death always in charge in the porous fiction of reality, the sound of the cold wind always audible. Because this “film maker of sounds” has the sound of the cold wind in all his films using the leaves on the trees, whitened countryside and contemplating eyes to create a poetic reading of the world.
www.loznitsa.com
