Synopsis
Based on the life and work of the Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), The Last Bolshevik is a tribute from one filmmaker to another. An archeological expedition into film history that reveals new cinematic treasures, the film prompts a reflection on the relation between art and politics in the former Soviet Union.
A word from Tënk
Chris Marker opens this great reflection on a century of communism as told through the life of Medvedkin with a quote from George Steiner that is as straightforward as it is intriguing: “It’s not the literal past that rules us […] It is images of the past.” This epitaph could easily introduce much of Marker’s work since the 1980s; the battle is not only waged in the theater of operations, but also—if not more—in the symbolic world of the imagination. Marker’s pedagogy of images draws its primary justification from this truth: filmmakers are well-positioned to understand the motifs that rule our collective imagination, and by extension, even our most banal actions. Much of The Last Bolshevik is dedicated to exploring/explaining the symbolic power of Soviet communism and Soviet cinema (as Marker puts it, Eisenstein laid “the scene of multiple generations’ collective imagination”!)
Arnaud Lambert
Filmmaker
