Падение династии Романовых
Samenvattingen(1)
In het begin van de jaren twintig van de vorige eeuw begon Esfir Shub, regisseur en editor bij staatsfilmbedrijf Goskino, bevriend met Dziga Vertov en mentor van Sergei Eistenstein, aan een lange studie van de Russische prerevolutionaire geschiedenis. Ze zocht en vond filmmateriaal in alle uithoeken van de Sovjet-Unie, waaronder unieke beelden die door de filmcrew van de tsaar zelf ooit waren gedraaid. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty is een gedreven, zeer gedetailleerde en politiek gemotiveerde compilatie van het materiaal waarmee Shub de jaren 1912-1917 reconstrueert, waarin de Russische tsaar en aristocratie plaatsmaken voor de Russische revolutie en de komst van Lenin. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)
(meer)Recensie (1)
It is only characteristic that one of the members of the large family of documentary films was created for a purpose that does not align with the task that prevailing common sense imposed on it yesterday and today - to neutrally reflect reality and objectively retell history. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, the father of the montage documentary, inherited a clear socio-political motivation from its dual mother, Esfir Shub,and the October Revolution. The description of facts overlaps with a particular interpretation that denies universal objectivity and - let us add to it with folk wisdom - "criminally distorts reality." If this naïve opinion, which stubbornly denies that every interpretation is a crime committed against "reality," but with the caveat that interpretation can never be avoided and is a necessary addition to every event, every text, and in this case, archival material can be easily refuted, it is possible by pointing to this film. Since the montage documentary, which, with its structure, was most suitable for a documentary film about more recent history in general and has therefore become its most common prototype to this day (with minor modifications: intertitles replaced by voice-overs and supplemented with talking heads), it found its first portrait in a film with a clear ideological function. It is up to each modern viewer to understand that the ideological content of the documentary (ideological in the sense of worldview, ideas, etc.) can change, but that the ideological-interpretive function is and will remain irreducible. After all, in the indifferent face of Nicholas II Romanov, there will always only be what we or the time period want to see in it and what the montage composition, connecting it once with "bloodiness" and another time with "holiness," will embed into it.
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