Outstanding Feature Film Director and Documentary Filmmaker - Sergey Loznitsa

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:54

Documentary cinema of our time has practically got rid of gross "noise" that distorts the material. His narrative language has changed in connection with the global changes in the human worldview that have occurred in the 21st century. According to the unanimous opinion of the leading filmmakers of our time, at present, a documentary filmmaker should ideally feel the distance and consider each frame as a separate aesthetic value. Director Sergei Loznitsa is one of those professionals who never ceases to amaze the public with his work.

Short Biographical Facts

The future visionary was born in the provincial Belarusian town of Baranovichi in early September 1964. After graduation, the young man continued his education as an engineer-mathematician at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Possessing good intellect, Sergey Loznitsa combined the position of an employee of the Institute of Cybernetics and a translator from the Japanese language. In the early 90s, he decides to radically change his professional passions,entering the directing department of VGIK. The mentor who taught the student the tricks of creating feature films was Nana Jorjadze. After graduating from a higher educational institution, Sergei Loznitsa, whose biography will be closely connected with his filmography in the future, begins his career as a documentary filmmaker at the St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio. In 2001 he emigrated to Germany. At the moment, the filmmaker has three full-length films and six short films. Most of Sergei Loznitsa's works have received prizes from the Kinotavr festival, Nika prizes, and the Cannes Film Festival.

Author's handwriting

Sergey Loznitsa, according to film critics, is currently one of the modern documentary directors, creating projects with a touch of genius. And it is rather not about the outstanding talent of the master, but about style. Formal extremism, present in the works of the master, can only be justified by the status of a "masterpiece". The radical aesthetics of his paintings implies a cardinal status. For other filmmakers, the author's techniques may not work, or cause side meanings. But with Loznitsa, all released projects cannot be positioned otherwise than as a masterpiece, for example, the film "Portrait".

Highlight Documentaries

Filmography of Sergei Loznitsa in 2002-2003. replenished with two works, which are considered one of the best projects of the director. These are the "Landscape" and "Portrait" tapes. The author managed to derive an impeccable formula for success - short, but effective. He used well-established, traditional genres as initial data, applying to them the texture of "convex" time. The director sublimates film time as such, producing an unparalleled extract. Few of the directors manage to make the viewer feel the time of the picture so keenly. For this effect, Sergei Loznitsa deliberately delays the camera's focus on motionless human figures or deserted landscapes for a long time.

The greatest visionaries of our time eventually solved dramaturgic tasks determined by the progressive development of the plot and the movement of time thanks to visualization. And even if their shots were existential, the pulse of the history of mankind was still heard in each of them. In Loznitsa, it seems that there is a physically tangible overlay on top of a static frame of a temporary layer. It seems that the image does not exist separately on the moving film, but is combined with it. The camera in the hands of the master turns into a retort.

Cine language perfectionism

Sergei Loznitsa's feature film projects are valuable lessons in film language perfectionism. His extra-long and long shots inevitably require a focus shift, which becomes a way for the director to place intra-frame accents. His full-length feature films are shot in the traditional manner: the use of a documentary (manual) film camera, the meaning of each scene, natural (not pavilion) interiors, natural (not simulated) mannerthe behavior of performers in the frame. Strictly speaking, there is nothing innovative in this approach to filmmaking. Rather, they are rules set by the theme of the story and the chosen way of its disclosure, by the characters and the setting. The director himself tries to invite ordinary people to shoot along with professional actors. According to Loznitsa, it is on their faces that one can read truly fascinating stories, because the faces of artists are often polished by the mass of roles played and lose their individuality.