Icarus Films: Three Songs about Motherland

Three Songs about Motherland

Directed by Marina Goldovskaya

39 minutes / Color
Russian / English subtitles
Release: 2010
Copyright: 2009

Documentary - Expository

Three Songs about Motherland is included on the same DVD as One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich and In the Dark

THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND depicts a dramatic collision between the past, the present, and the future in contemporary Russia by focusing on three different cities in this vast land.

In the far eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a still-living symbol of Soviet industrialization in the 1930s, older Russian citizens speak about their youth, when they felt part of something bigger than themselves: building "a city of communist dreams" in the middle of nowhere. Some cling to the promise of those glory days while others, express regret and disappointment at its ultimate failure.

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Then, the cosmopolitan city of Moscow bids farewell to Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless journalist and human rights activist who was assassinated for her political activity amid the chaotic power struggles of the post-Soviet nation, fighting to her death for a young Russian democracy.

Finally, residents of Khanty-Mansijsk, one of the main centers of Siberia's budding oil industry, speak about their beloved fairy tale-like town, where the communist dream has been swept away by new aspirations for a prosperous future.

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And what are they, today's aspirations? What is behind the fairy tale? Will the new "capitalist dream" come true, or will it turn out to be another illusion, another myth? In the words of the great Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev, "We are not destined to foretell."

During the course of the film, three songs performed by contemporary singer Elena Kamburova serve as a leitmotif which unites these three separate stories into one cohesive whole: a frank and vibrant picture of Russia today.

“THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND [is] the title of Marina Goldovskaya’s inspired wandering throughout her country. Each of us in his manner sings the paean or the doom of a place on Earth that defies any rational grasp. …Sometimes we come to the conclusion that Mother Russia just can’t be analyzed, criticized, dismantled, explained: too complex, too brutal, too elusive, too paradoxical, too cavorting… Sometimes even, to my dismay, she can’t be loved. But still, yes, she can be sung.” —Chris Marker

"A frank and realistic picture of Russia today after three decades of the glory age of industrialization." —The Russian Review

"THREE SONGS ABOUT MOTHERLAND offers three interesting portraits of contemporary Russia." —Anthology Review Database

"Provides a rich, contradictory, and panoramic view of Russian society in the first decade of the 21st century—in just 39 minutes. This may be the best short documentary about contemporary Russia; it is to be savored like one of those delicate Russian pancakes filled with sour cream and beluga caviar." —Andrew Jenks, Ph.D., editor of Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History and professor of History, California State University

"Keen and delicate psychological portraits. Set firmly in the present, Goldovskaya's film is a three-part look at her native land which showcases the filmmaker's understanding, or perhaps her emotions, about Russia's convoluted history from without and from within. The film is Goldovskaya's passionate attempt to try to define the Russian national character." —Documentary Magazine