PRAYER
1990, 24 min., USSR; short-length documentary
Director: Vladimir Eisner
A QUIET MONASTERY
1992, 30 min., Russia; short-length documentary
Director: Vladimir Eisner
THE LAST TERM
2002, 28 min., Russia; short-length documentary
Director: Vladimir Eisner
“Prayer” explores the forms of human togetherness, of co-existence, as the familiar world comes apart: from Orthodox rites to crowds at rallies. Off-screen, an intense symphony of fragments — concert music, liturgical chant, noise, and a Babel of voices. Gradually, news footage enters the visual fabric, on both a local and cosmic scale: from the slaughter in Afghanistan to filming on the Mir space station.
About the director:
Vladimir Eisner
“Even someone who is not an actor acts while on set, though he is playing himself,” Eisner says in an interview. “A Quiet Monastery” is such a documentary performance. The performer is Bardiashvili, a watchman who looks into the camera with a gap-toothed smile and issues one piece of “everyday wisdom” after another. His stage is the construction site he guards and his native town, both resembling a post-apocalyptic landscape.
About the director:
Vladimir Eisner
To be thrown into the world, to pass through an enfilade of social roles, and to vanish. Is that the human lot? And how far is it fixed by milieu and era? “The Last Term” offers no answers, but poses these questions with a bluntness that spares neither the viewer nor the hero: Boris Efimovich Egorov, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War who became a professional thief, served time in prison, and is now living out his days in a retirement home, surrounded by other former criminals.
About the director:
Vladimir Eisner
