31 Days

This time next month, I will be getting ready to go to Sundance. I'm kind of excited.

#3 My Perestroika (U.S. Documentary)
The Bolshevik revolution, the cold war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union defined the history of the twentieth century. With such a past, what does it mean to be Russian today? Robin Hessman's lovingly crafted documentary, My Perestroika, adopts the idea of the "everyman story," suggesting that the unheralded lives of the last generation of the Soviets to grow up behind the iron curtain hold the key to understanding the contradictions of modern Russia from the inside out. Crafted during five years of researching and shooting, and based on almost a decade of living in Russia in the 1990s, Hessman's film poetically interweaves an extraordinary trove of home movies, Soviet propaganda films, and intimate access to five schoolmates whose linked, but very different, histories offer a moving portrait of newly middle-class Russians living lives they could never have imagined when they were growing up.

This should be a really interesting film as it talks to Russians who have lived through significant time periods in Russia, but they are also events that affected the rest of the world. To have a life changed that dramatically in such a short period of time is remarkable and interesting, to say the least. I have a feeling it's going to be pretty raw footage and not much altered for the sake of the film. I'm really interested to hear about the experiences they had and how that has changed them.

I don't think I've seen a movie that could compare to the idea of the movie. If you have, let me know. I'd be interested in seeing one.