Helga Landauer, Director and Poet, Palo Alto, California

By the age of 25, Anna Akhmatova had been granted fate's every conceivable
gift—poetic talent, strength of character, beauty and fame. She was then
inundated with the tragedies of her century: the arrests and executions of
loved ones, starvation, hardship, revolutions and wars, the Soviet terror.
Akhmatova survived years of fear, isolation, betrayal. Some of her poems,
too dangerous to commit to paper, survived for many years only as memorized by a few close friends.

This story is at the core of the film. It emerges before the viewer's eyes
from a mix of archival and modern footage, unique recordings of Akhmatova's voice, her poems, her many portraits by contemporaries, and a narrative by Anatoly Naiman, who knew Anna Akhmatova for the last seven years of her life. And like an ancient tragedy, A Film about Anna Akhmatova teems with portentous side players: Apollo and the muses, Dido and Aeneas from her beloved record of Purcell's opera, witches and sovereigns, dancers and statues, the grand stage set of Leningrad, and an eternal chorus of milling crowds.

Nevertheless, "Akhmatova was always not who you thought she was," warns
Naiman. "Because she had such a tragic fate, people always approached her
wearing tragic, suitably doleful expressions. But at any moment she might say or do something that completely refuted all their preconceptions."



Film website:
http://www.akhmatovafilm.com/home/




This event will be held in the 6th floor Flom auditorium.

Please note that seating for this event is available on a first come, first served basis-no reservations required. Please call on the day of the event to confirm. Please bring an identification card with a photograph (e.g. driver's license, work ID, or university ID) as part of the building's security procedures.