ENG / RUS
140×215 (60×90/16) paperback, ill., 360 pp., 2011 ISBN 978‑5‑86793‑920‑5
World rights available
In recent decades the famed Russian director Alexei German has been one of the most important but least understood figures on the global arts scene. After many hours of interviews Anton Dolin has produced the definitive account of German's origins: his parents, his wartime childhood, his adolescence during the Khrushchev-era Thaw, and his ordeals in the labyrinths of the Soviet film industry. He explains how a new cinematic language emerged, and what we can expect from German's fifth full-length film, on which he has worked for over a decade.
German is not the only hero of this book. He is joined by many others, whose lives add up to the story of an era. Falling somewhere between fact and anecdote, myth and history, cinema and literature, these stories are about memory, time and work, which imperceptibly transform into art.
Anton Dolin is a film critic who works with Russia's largest film publications. He is the author of books about Lars von Trier (NLO, 2004, 2007) and Takeshi Kitano (NLO, 2006), based on interviews with the directors.
"German's story about himself is of course also a novel. But being able to read his own words (which were undoubtedly recorded during live interviews with the author, though this is not obvious in the book) is of lesser importance. More crucial is the ability to see a person in context, to feel and describe this context, to put the hero in a framework... but in such a way that the framework does not overshadow him, and make him too insignificant against a monumental backdrop. This book tells us far more about a person than about cinema. It explains almost nothing about German's filmmaking... From the director's stories we learn much about his origins, context and the fate of his films. But we do not understand them any better. What happens in this book is completely different – in the narrative we begin to recognize, right from the start, the distinctive intonation of German's films. That Dolin was able to capture this, and commit it to paper, is a remarkable achievement. In unexpected fashion this interview becomes another of German's acts of memory, together with 'Twenty Days Without War,' 'Lapshin' and 'Khrustalev.'" Igor Gulin OpenSpace.ru
