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BLOCKADE
Written, Directed & Edited by: Sergei Loznitsa.
Produced by: Viacheslav Telnov.
Released by: First Run/Icarus Films.
Language: English.
Country of Origin: Russia. 52 min. Not Rated.

AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER
Directed by: Irina Gedrovich.
Written by: Lev Roshal.
Director of Photography: Ilya Melikhov.
Edited by: Sergey Norikov.
Language: English.
Released by: Icarus Films/First Run Films.
Country of Origin: Russia. 26 min. Not Rated.

What 9/11 is to Americans, World War II’s siege of Leningrad is to Russians. For 900 days during 1941-‘44, Hitler’s blockade of this historic city left more than half a million citizens dead, most from starvation, disease, and cold. Today, it’s hard for us to conceive of the day-to-day horrors, but the Russian documentary, Blockade, which has its U.S. premiere this month, convincingly reconstructs the city’s gradual descent into hell.

That transition begins benignly enough. Citizens are seen busily, patriotically constructing fortifications, testing out artillery – women in uniform working alongside their men. German prisoners, limping and wounded, are paraded through the streets, objects of derision. Smiles cross the faces of onlookers.

In the next phase, the nightly air raids have begun. Citizens run for cover and draw blackout curtains. Glowing embers light up the sky, and huge swaths of the city lie in ruins, hidden beneath billowing smoke. Power fails; gasoline is unobtainable. Trolleys and trucks are abandoned under gorgeous latticework of frozen tree branches as winter sets in.

Citizens tear up the remains of buildings for firewood and search in the rubble for salvageable items. Posted notices advertise goods for sale, in exchange for food. Family after family drags household goods on sleds going – where? Soon the sleds can be seen hauling not just household items but shrouded corpses. Figures in the street walk more slowly, bent by the cold, starvation, and God knows what personal losses. People casually pass by corpses in the street, as if they were piles of debris.

To augment the film’s impact, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has added a soundtrack to the silent footage that evokes everything from passing streetcars to the crunch of footsteps in snow. Significantly, he includes no voiceover. “If I put in a voiceover, I offer my view, and that means I exclude the possibility of the viewer having his own view,” Loznitsa told The Moscow Times.

One wonders what he meant. How many different “views” could we have of a man pushing corpses around in a mass grave to make room for more, or a woman sobbing over the bundled corpse of a baby? Debate might well occur, however, over the film’s final images, illustrating the degree to which Hitler drained the humanity out of Leningrad. From 1946 footage, smiling and laughing citizens jockey for vantage points at the public hanging of eight German prisoners of war.

Accompanying Blockade is the shorter and arresting Amateur Photographer, again exploring the banality of evil. This documentary also comes to us from Russia, but the footage was retrieved from KGB archives. While researching there, Jewish writer Lev Roshal discovered the diary of a World War II German soldier, here identified only as Gerhard M. Assigned to the Eastern Front for “retaliatory measures in captured areas,” Gerhard M.’s job was to “resettle” Jews, execute partisans, and seize valuables for the Reich. He did so not just willingly but joyfully, documenting every gruesome step, with snapshots and daily entries in his diary. Joan Oleck
March 12, 2007