Sergei Loznitsa to Receive Award in Krakow/ 1
A press release came in from Krakow Film Festival two days ago. Here comes the essence of it, followed by a post of some references, we have made to films of a very productive and excellent director of short and long documentary and fiction films:
This year, the Krakow Film Foundation Programme Council decided to honour the eminent director of documentary films, Sergei Loznitsa, with the Dragon of Dragon award in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the development of the international cinema. The 21st laureate of this prestigious award is at the same time the youngest winner of the award in history… big names like Jonas Mekas, Werner Herzog, Marcel Lozinski, Albert Maysles are among previous winners as are Priit Pärn, the Quay Brothers, Jerzy Kucia and Paul Driessen – remember that the festival is also the place for artistic animation films.
The President of the Programme Council, the film critic and film theorist, Prof. Tadeusz Lubelski, gave three main reasons for the nomination: “First, the consistent, extremely original and fruitful explorations of the form. Loznitsa created his own style of documentary film, resulting from patience and distance to the world, based on long shots and brilliant soundtrack. Kracauer would have had an insoluble problem with his works, because this is the cinema of pure recording, at the same time completely created. And the end result tends to be worthy of the dramas by Beckett.
Secondly, Loznitsa as a film-maker is an inquisitive and unyielding explorer of Russia. He discovers the weight of its past (often bringing archival tapes to life), but also its unique, sometimes shocking present. To this aim serve him the explorations of the documentary film’s form, though he often uses them also in feature films, such as the recent brilliant film “A Gentle Creature.” Thirdly, this is a film-maker who is connected with our festival since the very beginnings of his artistic work, that is, for over twenty years. So we can almost view this director – born in Baranavichy, educated in Kiev, residing in Germany for many years – as a film-maker from Krakow.”
