A FILM ABOUT ANNA AKHMATOVA
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"A Film About Anna Akhmatova is an important happening
for me, for all of us."
- Mikhail Baryshnikov
One of Russia's greatest poets
A survivor of fame and terror
By age twenty-five, fate had granted Anna Akhmatova every
conceivable gift—poetic talent, strength of character, beauty,
and fame amidst a brilliant generation. She was then inundated
with the tragedies of her century: the arrests and executions
of her loved ones, starvation, hardships, wars and revolutions,
the Soviet regime’s destruction of the culture itself and almost
everyone who was part of it, persecution and civic death,
isolation, betrayal. Yet Akhmatova emerged victorious, armed
with mere conscience and words of poetry that were for many
years too dangerous even to commit to paper, surviving only as
memorized by a few close friends. That victory is the core of the
film. But A Film about Anna Akhmatovais not a simple "bio pic."
Rather, it is a live process of recreating a story akin to ancient
tragedy. Before the viewer’s eyes it emerges from archival and
modern footage, unique sound recordings of Akhmatova’s voice,
her poems and photographs, and the many paintings and
portraits of her, with the commentary of the poet Anatoly
Naiman, who knew Akhmatova in her last years.
Country: USA, Russia
Director: Helga Landauer
DVD features: Stereo, English Language Subtitles, non-commercial
public performance rights
Encoding: All Zone NTSC
Running Time: 103 minutes
Year: 2009
Ray Privett
Cinema Purgatorio / RCP Media
1 (646) 789 4119