Helga Olshvang Landauer
BY Zachary Deretsky

Naiman compares Akhmatova to a white unicorn which appears in the hollow of the forest, a mysterious and unknown being beyond our time and space. This is a very strong image that evokes other cinematic moments in which the eye on nature is very much present, as if waiting for the unicorn to re-emerge. Do you share this sentiment of étrangeté and fascination in relation to Akhmatova? How did your gaze on her evolve through this film?

I share the sentiment of étrangeté in relation to an artist when this quality is a genuine one rather than self-assumed. For Akhmatova, this étrangeté was initially very genuine. However, over the years, she became more aware of it and occasionally used it as a shelter, or as a weapon.

Often, when one works with biographical material, the subject becomes more real and gains human qualities in the course of one’s work … my experience was the opposite. Akhmatova herself became more ethereal and less comprehensible than the image that I had prior to this project. For me, however, her poetry became more concrete and its subjects more personal.

Often, when one works with biographical material, the subject becomes more real and gains human qualities in the course of one’s work. In the process of listening to Naiman, and working on this film, my experience was the opposite. Akhmatova herself became more ethereal and less comprehensible than the image that I had prior to this project. For me, however, her poetry became more concrete and its subjects more personal.

This film also incorporates a substantial amount of rare (breathtaking!) archival footage. How do you conceive of their onscreen importance here?

My goal was to create a cinematic space with the archival footage, some sort of parallel theme in black and white, a fragile celluloid world inhabited by dead souls. Rather than illustrating word-to-word what was said, I tried, while following the historic relevance of the shown footage, to maintain some sort of timeless nature of its scenes — thus, for example, while listening about the impact of the revolution, we see the footage of a tremendous flood in St. Petersburg, which happened during that time. And the ever-changing crowd becomes the chorus in the tragedy. It follows Akhmatova from the turn of twentieth century in Crimea to Tsar’s Village, Paris, St. Petersburg, and then to Tashkent and Leningrad during the Second World War, as well as to Moscow and Komarovo in the 1950s. While making the film, we traveled to those places, and the modern footage deliberately contrasts with the archival one, emphasizing the remoteness of Akhmatova’s time and presence from our own.