The Revue

After his successful film, Blockade, which consisted of newsreel footage from the vast Soviet archives and covered the unknown side of the siege of Leningrad during WW II, director Sergei Loznitsa continued working with newsreel material. This time though, he found a different theme in the archive footage. He also found a new form of presenting it. The original soundtrack made for Blockade was meant to make the viewer feel part of the action. His latest film, The Revue, is based on archive propaganda newsreels produced in the USSR in the 1950s and 1960s. By changing the film’s stylistics the director also tries to change the role of the audience. While creatively re-using the same propaganda tools, he lets the audience become the object of the propaganda. With The Revue Loznitsa shows the almost forgotten side of the Soviet times and the way of thinking then. He explores the lives of people across the vast Soviet Motherland. Full of hardship, deprivation and absurd rituals, but at the same time illuminated by the glorious shining of the communist illusion. All this is wrapped in the author’s approach to the material, as shown in the editing, soundtrack and form of the film. (LC)