‘Blockade’ by Sergei Loznitsa (2006)

The project of making a film about life under the 900 day siege of Leningrad dates to October 1941, when, in the unimaginably bleak winter conditions on starvation rations, Leningrad filmmakers turned from filming for regular newsreels to recording the terrible plight of the city. While the footage filmed over that winter was frequently edited to tell the uplifting narrative of survival and ultimate victory, Sergei Loznitsa adds sounds, echoing the images we see, but no words; he forces us to look and think again about the testimonial power of the camera facing indescribable scenes of suffering.

Jeremy Hicks is Reader in Russian Culture and Film at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938-46 (Pittsburgh, 2012),

Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film (I.B. Tauris, 2007), Mikhail Zoshchenko, The Galosh: Selected Short Stories, London (Angel Books, 2000) [selection, translation, introduction and notes]. [US hardback edition- Overlook Press, 2006; paperback 2009], Mikhail Zoshchenko and the Poetics of Skaz (Astra Press, 2000); as well as many articles on Russian and Soviet history, film, literature and journalism.