The Last Bolshevik by Chris Marker,1993 120mins
Based on the life and work of the Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), The Last Bolshevik is a tribute from one filmmaker to another. An archeological expedition into film history that reveals new cinematic treasures, the film prompts a reflection on the relation between art and politics in the former Soviet Union.
The film captures the commitment, energy, struggles, illusions and disillusions of a believing but never naïve Bolshevik. From Medvedkin"s classic 1934 satire Happiness, and the "film train" which he directed in the 1930s, to his sardonic comedies and bitter war newsreels, Chris Marker draws a panorama of the artistic, political, and moral universe of a life and a country, bringing it right up to date with his own vision of Russia today.
An intricate work with many levels and layers, The Last Bolshevik is also a distillation of the art and beliefs of one of the greatest documentarians of our time, Chris Marker, who has revolutionized documentary as his near-contemporary Jean-Luc Godard transformed film fiction, crossing boundaries and mixing genres.
Above all, The Last Bolshevik is a reflection on what it"s like being on this planet at this particular moment - a reflection that"s both poetic and practical, passionate and considered... What Marker gives us is neither a video nor a film, but an exciting new means of expression - the beginning of a dialogue and discussion that flies in the face of the received wisdom that we now can safely put the 20th century behind us. After the glibness, the dullness, the despair we hear about the death of communism, of utopia, or idealism just about everywhere we turn, in the pages of The Nation as well as The National Review, Marker reminds us, even in his own disillusionment and bitter irony, that we"re much too eager to bury a history and a legacy we never really understood in the first place. Communism is over? Very well then: let"s take a good, hard look at what we"ve decided to dismiss. And weep, as Medvedkin once did when he found he could put two pieces of film together and have it mean something. "Nowadays," Marker reminds us, "television floods the whole world with senseless images and nobody cries."
- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
For more information,
contact Rachael Rakes 510.208.1706 rachael@akpress.org
AK Press
674-A 23rd Street
Oakland Ca, 94612
www.akpress.org
