Alexander Sokurov
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Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Соку́ров) (b. June 14, 1951, Podorwikha, Irkutsk Oblast) is a Russian auteur filmmaker from St Petersburg who has been hailed as successor to Andrei Tarkovsky. His movies are said to represent an ultimate challenge in contemporary intellectual film making.
Sokurov was born in Siberia in the officer's family on June 14, 1951. He graduated from the History Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he made friends with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his Mirror.
Most of Sokurov's early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an interview with Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori Kozintsev's flat in St Petersburg.
Mother and Son (1996) was his first internationally acclaimed feature film. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003) which baffled the critics with its implicit homoeroticism (though Sokurov himself has criticized this particular interpretation). Between these two parts, Sokurov filmed a trilogy on the 20th-century politicians: Moloch (1999) about Hitler, Taurus (2000) about Lenin, and The Sun (2004) about Emperor Hirohito.
Sokurov is a Cannes Film Festival regular, four of his movies having debuted there one by one. Although he has been somewhat reluctant to cast accomplished actors in his features, the Russian Film Academy awarded several Nika Awards to him. His most commercially and critically successful effort to date has been a semi-documentary Russian Ark (2002), acclaimed primarily for its visually hypnotic images and single, unedited, shot.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Feature Films
- The Lonely Voice of Man (Одинокий голос человека, 1978–1987)
- The Degraded (Разжалованный, 1980)
- Painful Indifference (Скорбное бесчувствие, 1983–1987)
- Empire (Ампир, 1986)
- Days of Eclipse (Дни затмения, 1988)
- Save and Protect (Спаси и сохрани, 1989)
- The Second Circle (Круг второй, 1990)
- Stone (Камень, 1992)
- Whispering Pages(Тихие страницы, 1993)
- Mother and Son (Мать и сын, 1996)
- Moloch (Молох, 1999)
- Taurus (Телец, 2000)
- Russian Ark (Русский ковчег, 2002)
- Father and Son (Отец и сын, 2003)
- The Sun (Солнце, 2004)
[edit] Documentaries
- Maria (Peasant Elegy) (1978–1988)
- Sonata for Hitler (1979–1989)
- Sonata for Viola. Dmitri Shostakovitch (1981)
- And Nothing More (1982–1987)
- Evening Sacrifice (1984–1987)
- Patience of Labour (1985–1987)
- Elegy (1986)
- Moscow Elegy (1986–1988)
- Petersburg Elegy (1990)
- Soviet Elegy (1990)
- To The Events In Transcaucasia (1990)
- A Simple Elegy (1990)
- A Retrospection of Leningrad (1957–1990) (1990)
- An Example of Intonation (1991)
- Elegy from Russia (1992)
- Soldier's Dream (1995)
- Spiritual Voices (1995)
- Oriental Elegy (1996)
- Hubert Robert. A Fortunate Life (1996)
- A Humble Life (1997)
- The St. Petersburg Diary: Inauguration of a monument to Dostoevsky (1997)
- The St. Petersburg Diary: Kosintsev's Flat (1998)
- Confession (1998)
- The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn (1998)
- dolce… (1999)
- Elegy of a Voyage (2001)
- The St. Petersburg Diary: Mozart. Requiem (2004)
- Elegy of a life: Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya (2006)
