Andrzej Wajda / Philip Morris Freedom Prize to Film Director Alexander Sokurov

Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark is a masterpiece of cinematic art! Alone the technical side of this tour-de-force begs description and numbs the imagination. Judging from countless essays, reviews, and articles already written about the film and the director, it will be discussed for its brilliance for some time to come. Produced by Jens Meuer and Judy Tossell at Egoli Tossell Film in Berlin, together with 18 coproduction partners, Russian Ark, from concept to realization, was eight years in the making.
       The breakthrough came when digital filmmaking with a new 25p HD Steadicam camera matched accepted standards of aesthetic cinematic experience. Just imagine a one-shot aesthetic covering 1500 meters in 35 rooms of the Hermitage Museum and the Winter Palace. Consider the scope of charting 400 years of Russian history. Picture a space-trip populated with 897 actors and more than 500 extras and assistants. Envision halls and corridors decorated and lighted to spotlight historical dramas: Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Tsars Nicholas I and Nicholas II, together with families and entourage. Visit the Hermitage with a blind woman painter and overhear a conversation between a museum director and an art historian. Enjoy a ballroom party in 1904 with precise dancing to orchestral music. And as this magnificent performance draws to a close, tumbled down a staircase with our guide, the Marquis de Custine (1790-1857), and hundreds of guests in evening dress to leave the »Russian Ark« and disappear into the night. All in a single shot ­ a »moving picture« in the purest sense of the term!

       The prize will be awarded in the Berliner Rathaus on Sunday, 9 February 2003, at 6 pm. This prestigious prize, initiated by Gary McVey of the American Cinema Foundation in Los Angeles to award eastern European directors, has honored Kyra Muratova (2000), Jan Svankmajer (2001), and Andreas Dresen (2002) ­ following an American Cinema Foundation Freedom Award to Andrzej Wajda in 1999.

KINO’s Film of the Year 2002 ­ Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark

       By general concensus, members of the jury ­ Ron Holloway, Lutz Jenke, Ulrich Lüder, Tanja Meding, Dorothea Moritz, Dorothea Paschen