Marina Razbezhkina is a well-known Russian documentary filmmaker, educator, and founder of the largest independent documentary school in the country. Her very original approach to documentary, which combines intimate proximity to the protagonist with raw observational aesthetics, revolutionized the Russian film landscape and became the trademark of her school. Her students most often work as a one-person crew with a lightweight hand-held camera shadowing their protagonists up close. This “hunt for reality,” as Razbezhkina terms the practice, usually results in deeply engaging observational documentaries that completely absorb the viewer into an unfamiliar reality. In this interview Razbezhkina talks about the beginnings of her career, explains the origins and the core of her filmmaking method, and discusses the changing role of documentary in the modern world.
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Spring 2020
Research Article|
March 01 2020
Hunting for Reality: An Interview with Marina Razbezhkina
Anastasia Kostina
Anastasia Kostina
Anastasia Kostina is a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Studies Program at Yale University. Her academic interests include documentary film history and theory with particular focus on ideology and representation. Her dissertation research focuses on the films of Esfir Shub, one of the founders of Soviet documentary and a pioneer of the compilation film.
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Film Quarterly (2020) 73 (3): 21–27.
Citation
Anastasia Kostina; Hunting for Reality: An Interview with Marina Razbezhkina. Film Quarterly 1 March 2020; 73 (3): 21–27. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2020.73.3.21
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