[im] Screening of Sergei Loznitsa's documentary, The Trial (2018)

[ikon at ikon.hu]

Screening of Sergei Loznitsa's documentary, The Trial (2018)

Visual Studies Platform (VSP) at CEU

2019. március 19. 18:00

http://vsp.ceu.edu

OSA Archívum, Arany János utca 32.

	Moscow, USSR. 1930. The Pillar Hall of 
the State House of the Unions. A group of top 
rank economists and engineers is put on trial 
accused of plotting a coup d'etat against the 
Soviet government.

	It's alleged that they made a secret pact 
with the French Prime Minister, Raymond Poincare, 
and with other Western political leaders, aiming 
to destroy the Soviet power, restore capitalism 
and break up the USSR. All charges are fabricated 
and the accused are forced to confess to the 
crimes they never committed. The court, presided 
by Andrey Vyshinsky, who later became known as 
the diabolical prosecutor, key- figure in 
Stalinist show trials and the advocate of mass 
repressions, delivers death verdicts.

	Unique archive footage reconstructs one 
of the first show trials, masterminded by Stalin, 
which unfolds as a theatrical performance with 
actors - prosecutors, witnesses, defendants, 
judges - lying to themselves, to the audience and 
to the world. The drama is real, but the story is 
fake. The film gives an unprecedented insight 
into the origins of a deadly regime, which made 
the slogan "Lie is Truth" its everyday reality.

	Director's notes:

	I started working on a film about 
Stalin's show trials, which were held in the USSR 
in 1930s, a couple of years ago. My initial idea 
was to edit the footage from different trials in 
order to show how the machine of Soviet terror 
was established, and how the system gradually 
took over the minds of innocent citizens. 
However, soon after I began studying archive 
materials, I discovered the footage, which I 
found to be absolutely unique. One of the trials 
- the Industrial Party trial - was filmed in all 
details, from the beginning to the end, and it 
was with sound. I decided to make my film about 
this trial only.

	I decided to make the film in such a way, 
as to give the spectators a chance to spend 2 
hours in the USSR in 1930: to see and to 
experience the moment, when the machine of state 
terror, created by Stalin, was launched into 
action. This film is at once completely authentic 
and truthful - from the point of view of the 
material and the documentary method of shooting, 
and completely fake - as all the participants of 
the trial are telling lies, and they are all 
fully aware of that.

	My intention was to reconstruct the trial 
stage by stage. We restored and kept all the 
sound that was recorded in 1930. The only 
commentary I allowed myself to make in the entire 
film is right at the very end. I need this 
commentary in order to tell the truth, since it 
is impossible to learn the truth from any other 
episode of this documentary film. In fact, The 
Trial is a unique example of a documentary, in 
which one sees "24 frames of lies" per second.

	SERGEI LOZNITSA - director/script writer/ 
producer, was born on 5 September 1964 in 
Baranovici (USSR). He grew up in Kiev, and in 
1987 graduated from the Kiev Polytechnic with a 
degree in Applied Mathematics.

	In 1997 Loznitsa graduated from the 
Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) 
in Moscow. Loznitsa has directed 19 
internationally acclaimed documentary films and 4 
feature films, all of which were premiered in the 
Official Selection of Cannes Film Festival. In 
2013, Loznitsa launched a film production company 
ATOMS & VOID.

	Selected filmography: MY JOY (2010), IN 
THE FOG (2012), MAIDAN (2014), THE EVENT (2015), 
AUSTERLITZ (2016), A GENTLE CREATURE (2017), 
DONBASS (2018).

	The film screening and masterclass are 
co-organized by the Vera and Donald Blinken Open 
Society Archive and the Visual Studies Platform 
at CEU.