Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег) is a 2002 Russian film directed by Alexander Sokurov. It was filmed using a single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

The film displays 33 rooms of the museum, which are filled with a cast of over 2,000 actors. Russian Ark was recorded in uncompressed high definition video using a Sony HDW-F900. The information was not recorded compressed to tape as usual, but uncompressed onto a hard disk which could hold 100 minutes. Four attempts were made to complete the shot; the first three had to be interrupted due to technical faults, but the fourth attempt was completed successfully. The shot was executed by Tilman Büttner the Director of Photography/Steadicam Operator. Lighting Directors of Photography on the film were in fact Bernd Fischer and Anatoli Radionov.^[2] The director later drew a distinction between the whole project and the achievements of Büttner by 'rejecting',^[3] by letter,^[4] Büttner's nomination for a European Film Academy award.

download torrent avi in Russian with embedded english subtitles

• Shot in a single take. The first three attempts were cut short by technical difficulties, but the fourth was successful.
• The first uncompressed high definition film.
• Because the Hermitage museum had to be shut down, the production had only one day to shoot the film.
• Among the many problems that plagued the one-day-only production, there was a considerable language barrier. Director Aleksandr Sokurov speaks only Russian, and cinematographer Tilman Büttner speaks only German, so a translator followed the duo around (along with 'Büttner''s seven-man crew) to keep the communication open.
• The film's final, hypnotic dance sequence was a recreation of a 1913 gathering which marked the final ball ever held in Csarist Russia. It should be noted that the sequence was filmed in the exact same ballroom that was used in 1913, and that the room had not been used for dancing since that pre-Revolutionary time.
• The snowy courtyard that Catherine II walked through in the movie was covered and full of tropical plants and animals from around the world when Catherine II lived there. This second floor courtyard is now filled with statues and lilac bushes.
• Over 4,500 people participated in the making of the film, both in front of and behind the scenes. This included extras, seamstresses, grips, orchestras and the Hermitage staff.
• In interviews, the director has refused to say how many actors and extras appear in the film, or how much it cost.

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
An astonishing capsule of Russian history, 18 October 2008

Author: ackstasis from Australia

In many ways, Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Russian Ark (2002)' sits beyond the bounds of conventional film criticism. It unfolds as if in a lovely dream – vivid, dazzling and unforgettable, and yet simply indescribable. The film is quite literally a casual wander through centuries of Russian history, each elaborate room and hall of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg representing a different period of the nation's extremely rich history. Sokurov is not at all interested in telling a straightforward tale of Russia's past – there is no substantial plot to speak of – but rather he seeks to explore it, and every room, every graceful camera movement, every astounding set-piece of costumes and music, captures a tantalising snippet of a historical period long lost in the sands of time. An almost inconceivable feat of preparation and execution, the film was famously shot in a single, uninterrupted take, a technique that progresses far beyond being a mere commercial gimmick and envelopes the audience within Sokurov's mighty cinematic canvas. In other words, you're there.

An unseen twentieth-first century narrator, whom we assume to be Sokurov himself, awakens at the snow-swept entrance of the Hermitage Museum, having presumably died unexpectedly. For the next 90 minutes, his eyes become our eyes; we can only watch, awestruck, as he wanders through this living, breathing capsule of Russian history, every different room yielding a fantastic new time period that we may explore. It is in this way that Sokurov's one-take technique becomes absolutely indispensable. I love Roger Ebert's (31/1/2003) concluding observation: «If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening. 'Russian Ark' spins a daydream made of centuries.» The steady, uninterrupted flow of images keeps the journey vivid and authentic, sustaining an illusion that feels so genuine as to be almost inhabitable. By the end of the film, it is no longer Sokurov who is exploring the Hermitage, but it is us, and the richness with which each time period has been recreated is simply astonishing to behold.

I found interest in some critics' description of Sokurov as an «anti-Eisenstein,» demonstrating that our emotional register is not solely triggered by the artificial suggestiveness of purposeful film editing. Montage may very well tell us what we're supposed to think and feel, but the single take of 'Russian Ark' succeeds more momentously in immersing us in the moment, and so allowing our own individual emotions to form. The use of the dynamic long-take has been used, to varying extents, since around the time of Eisenstein – I particularly remember a sweeping outdoors shot in Murnau's 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927).' Hitchcock famously used long-takes in the brilliant 'Rope (1948),' and less-famously in the not-quite-so-brilliant 'Under Capricorn (1949).' Even in Russian cinema, Mikhail Kalatozov made incredible use of the technique in 'The Cranes are Flying (1957).' However, technical considerations aside, does Sokurov's film have much to offer us aside from a vague lesson in Russian history? I say that this question is an irrelevant one; all that matters are the emotions instilled within us.