 "Photo: Courtesy of The Cinema Guild")
The Friends of the Detroit Film Theater presented “Alexandra” on Oct. 24. The film marked the second installment in the Discussion on Film Series at the Detroit Film Theater.
Laura Kline, a professor in Wayne State’s Department of German and Slavic Studies, gave a lecture before the film was shown. Kline’s lecture provided a history of the relationship between Russians and Chechens — a population of people indigenous to the North Caucasus region in Russia.
“The Caucasus alone have dozens of different nationalities living there, many of these are indigenous people” Kline said. “The Chechens have been there since at least 10,000 B.C.”
The Russians overran the Chechens several centuries ago, but much of Chechnya never accepted Russian rule, and much of Russia does not consider that country to be a separate republic.
Chechnya has a population of 1 million. One of the reasons that the population is so small is because wars have been fought in the region during the past 15 years, Kline said.
Kline highlighted many of the similarities between the Russia-Chechnya and the United States-Iraq conflicts.
“We need to look deeply to understand other people,” Kline said. “We have to understand the people we might hate are complicated, changeable, limited in many ways, yet deserving of respect, dignity and a chance to redeem themselves.”
“Alexandra” was directed by Alexander Sokurov, a well-known Russian director whose most famous film is “The Russian Ark” which was composed wholly of a single shot in a Moscow museum.
The film tells the story of an elderly Russian woman, Alexandra, who boards a train of soldiers to visit her grandson, an officer in the Russian army. The grandmother, played by opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya, explores the military camp when she arrives, studying the soldiers and their routines.
After exploring the camp, Alexandra heads to the local Chechen market to shop for the soldiers at the base. While in the market Alexandra meets and befriends a Chechen woman who gives her a new perspective on the conflict.
Through the use of tight close-ups, and by filtering out much of the film’s color, Sokurov shows the overall depressing nature of the camp and, on a larger scale, war as a whole, Kline said.
The theater and the museum really benefit from having lecturers with unique experiences come to speak at these events, Director of Public Programs Larry Baranski said.
“We hope that these events will help students cross over Woodward to visit both the [Detroit Institute of Arts] and the DFT (Detroit Film Theatre),” said Margaret Thomas, house manager of the theater.
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