The Personal File Of Anna Akhmatova

The late Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is the subject of this haunting and strikingly visual memoir. Based on the writings of Akhmatova and writer Lidiya Chukovskaya, director Semyon Aranovich's chronicle begins in 1966 with Akhmatova's funeral (which he filmed despite threats of arrest). From there, we flash back to Anna's birth in 1889, near Odessa. A wordsmith from an early age, Akhmatova's first book of poems Evenings was published in 1912. Over the ensuing half century she would continue to lock horns in print with an ever increasingly totalitarian government, and suffer tremendous personal consequences. From her marriage to the writer Gumilyov (executed by the Bolsheviks in 1921), she bore one son Lev--who was often imprisoned. Superimposed over the documentary footage of a parade of Soviet leaders (Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev) and fellow writers (Mandelstam, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn) are several of Akhmatova's poems which are less of a political protest than a deep cry of anguish from the soul. In "Requiem," she writes: "Everything is confused forever/And I can no longer tell man from beast/I pray not for myself alone/But for everyone who stood with me/In the scorching sun and severe cold/Beneath that red blind wall." A powerful story of one woman's extraordinarily outspoken life in a world of institutionalized repression. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (See DESERT UNDER SIEGE for availability.)