Sobytie

In August 1991, the failed coup by Communist Party hard-liners against Gorbachev expedited the collapse of the USSR. Serge Loznitsa, with no voice-over, chronicles the seism that dealt a deathblow to the Soviet regime in a powerful fresco of found footage. “The event” that gives his film its title points to two things: first, historical fact, its imprint on Russia’s collective memory and national narrative; second, the re-editing of archive footage, which lends these news reports a striking relevance for the present. As in Blockade (2006), the filmmaker’s ambitious editing re-qualifies these anonymous archives, discreetly letting the signs and figures of the times emerge (such as Putin, then in the unlikely role of bodyguard). As in Maïdan (2014), the crowd – not so much a unanimous nation as an unpredictable body politic – focuses all of the filmmaker’s attention. With The Event, Loznitsa continues the contrasted portrait of former Soviet society and its multiple re-compositions. (Alice Leroy)