Russian Ark

Russian Ark

Russian Ark is a 2002 movie by Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov in which an unnamed and unseen (by the audience) narrator, voiced by the director, wanders through the Russian State Hermitage Museum, accompanied by a companion, the Marquis de Custine, who is visible to the audience (played by Sergei Dreiden). The observer and his companion meet various real and fictional personages from different periods of Russian history, including the present.

The Marquis de Custine was a real person. He made a trip to Russia in 1839.

The movie is the world's first unedited feature motion picture: it was recorded in uncompressed high definition film and consists of a single unedited 90-minute Steadicam shot through 33 rooms of the museum filled with a cast of over 800 actors.

Also noteworthy is that the fourth wall is repeatedly broken and re-erected; at times the narrator-director and the companion interact freely with the other performers, and at other times go completely unnoticed.

External links

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0318034

http://www.wellspring.com/russianark/production.html