Factory

Part of the four-volume Russia in Transition series, filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa's half-hour non-narrated award-winning documentary Factory takes viewers inside an aging industrial steel- and clay-producing plant in the Urals. We see a handful of male workers on the dismal floor, operating blast furnaces and filling giant ladles with molten steel, all of which is beautifully captured in rich dark tones with flashes of bright yellow, red, and orange. In the second half of the film, female employees are shown shaping clay into blocks—the steps are presented in reverse, concluding with the raw clay being hauled up from the bowels of the earth. Although the footage is of contemporary, post-Communist Russia, the technology looks decidedly ancient—not so much 20th century even as 19th century—and the factory appears to be staffed by a skeleton crew working in almost zombie-like fashion. In other words, this is a far cry from the smiling happy people propagandistic films from the ‘50s and ‘60s depicting the Soviet Union as a modern industrial nation. If this is a representative portrait, it's hard to see how Russia will be able to take its place as a high-tech exporter in a global economy. The other entries in the series are Portrait, The Settlement, and The Train Station (series price for all four films: $599). Recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)