DocAlliance Offers ”The Event” for Free

For two more days you will be able to watch, for free, Sergei Loznitsa’s masterly done archive film ”The Event” through the DocAlliance, ”your online documentary cinema”, a fine editorial choice for us to remember what happened in those memorable August days 25 years ago in Soviet Union. Here is the text from the DocAlliance website:

The film takes the viewers to the centre of events of the August Coup which shook the streets of Moscow between August 19 and 21, 1991. It was launched by the conservative branch of the Communist Party which frowned upon Gorbachev’s attempts at transforming the USSR. His political and economic reforms, known as perestroika and glasnost, aimed to create a federation of independent republics with a common president and political vision, finally led to Gorbachev’s short removal from the presidential post. However, the group of politicians who called themselves “The State Committee on the State of Emergency” did not gain the support of armed forces while the citizens of Moscow significantly resisted their attempt. They took to the streets, forming mass gatherings requiring the dissolution of the USSR and the formation of democratic Russia. As proved by the later course of events, it was the August Coup that helped install Boris Yeltsin as the political leader of the country and led to the final dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

And here is a quote from what I wrote when I watched the film at DOKLeipzig:

… Loznitsa is not in Moscow in this film, he is in Leningrad and gives me exceptional material from what happened in the streets and the squares, that I love so much today, where people gathered to try to understand what is going on. +  he gives me the legendary mayor Sobchak and his impressive speeches, “the sea of faces” listening to him, the USSR flag being substituted by the Russian, the slogans used like “fascism will not prevail”, bring the “coup gang to justice” and the name of Yeltsin shouted again and again. Fascinating…

http://dafilms.com/event/257-loznitsa_the_event/

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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