This event will take place at the Cape Ann Community Cinema at 21 Main Street in Gloucester

Directed by Alexander Sokurov
Written by Anatoly Nikiforov and Alexander Sokurov

This visionary film was shot entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg using a single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. The unnamed narrator of the film implies that he has died in a horrible accident and is now a ghost drifting through the palace. As he wanders through the rooms he encounters various real and fictional people from different periods in the city’s 300-year history. He is accompanied by “the European,” who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but it is repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, while at other times they pass unnoticed.

This program is $10; Museum members get $3 off at the refreshment stand. For more information please visit capeanncinema.wordpress.com.