Russian Film "Russian Ark" to be screened November 8, 2013

2002 film features the longest continuous shot in film history

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Still from "Russian Ark" directed by Aleksandr Sokurov

ALBANY, NY (10/24/2013)(readMedia)-- RUSSIAN ARK (Russia, 2002, 99 minutes, color, in Russian with English subtitles, directed by Aleksandr Sokurov) will be shown on Friday, November 8, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany's downtown campus. Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute as part of its Classic Film Series, the screening is free and open to the public.

Widely acclaimed as both a technical masterpiece and a captivating spectacle, this tour of three hundred years of Russian history represents, in its entirety, the single longest continuous shot in the annals of cinema. Featuring two thousand actors and three live orchestras, the film follows an invisible narrator and a group of dead souls as they cavort through thirty-three rooms of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg. Writing in the Village Voice, J. Hoberman called it, "Sublime.... blithely anachronistic and slyly achronological.... [a] dazzling dance to the music of time."

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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