Sergei Vladimirovich Loznitsa (b. 1964) is a Ukrainian film director of Belarusian origin known for his documentary style as well as his dramatic films. Loznitza lets original footage speak for itself, establishing for the viewer the place of a witness from a certain distance, recreating in the film an original feel of the situation as much as possible – without inserting his own interpretations.
Interviews
Interview 2019 in Russian with French translation at Paris university. (2 hours)
English Interview March 2022 about “MAIDAN” – “My hero is the Ukrainian people.” (10 minutes)
Longer Conversation 2022 with Director Sergei Loznitsa “MAIDAN” (2 hours)
Maidan – Revolution 2013-14
Maidan – Revolution of Dignity
A documentary with long stretches of uncut footage from various stages of the biggest popular uprising in Europe since the 1990s – a fight for freedom and dignity.
The Event – Uprising of Russians Against KGB Coup 1991
It was August 1991 and a group of KGB officials and their cohorts, furious at the reforms taking place, hatched a plot to overthrow Gorbachev, then the president of the U.S.S.R., and Yeltsin, the president of Russia. When people awoke on the morning of August 19, they were told that an emergency committee had been formed to rule the country and Gorbachev, then in his dacha in the Crimea, was too ill to govern. After the initial announcement, a news freeze was imposed, with radio stations broadcasting nothing but Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Less than four months later, the Soviet Union was no more.
Everyone outside the U.S.S.R. watched what was happening with a sense of disbelief: The inhabitants of Ronald Reagan’s ridiculously titled “evil empire” had had enough. The brilliance of “The Event” is the way Loznitsa brings us inside — not in the frantic meeting rooms of the plotters, but within the bosom of the people. Edited together from footage shot by eight cameramen who wandered the ever-increasing crowds that summer day in St. Petersburg, 400 miles away from the coup, the docu vividly captures the shift from bewilderment to empowerment as the population became ever more emboldened in their public disavowal of Bolshevism.
(from – Film Review “The Event”)
A Stalinistic show trial – 1930
Further work includes Donbas and the blockade of Leningrad and more.