Father And Son

Synopsis

A father and his son have lived alone for years in their own private world of co-dependency, full of memories and daily rituals. Now that the son has reached manhood, the two loving men sense the anguish of inevitable separation. The father knows he should maybe accept a better job in another city, maybe search for a new wife. Guilt creates difficulties for the son and his girlfriend. Each longs to do what's best for the other without hurt.

Biography

With an assorted 30 features, documentaries and shorts to his name, Aleksandr Sokurov has made testament of his search for a cinematic language to communicate the fundamentals of human experience.
The volume of the Russian filmmaker's work has been hailed as "pure, uncompromised cinema" by critics world-wide. His unique vision and style have been credited to the visual splendour, hermetic intensity and sense of suspended time found within his films.

The universality of his films was proven by the distribution of 1997's MOTHER AND SON in some 25 countries. The moving story of a dying woman's last day under the care of her son won kudos as "a rare cinema experience, simultaneously tranquil and intriguing."
Equally heralded were the film's hallucinatory visuals of the countryside, inspired by the tradition of 19th century German Romantic landscape painting - all accomplished without post-production enhancing.

In similar emotional fashion, Sokurov's 1990 feature THE SECOND CIRCLE was critically acclaimed for its treatment of a man coming to terms with his father's death as he prepares the body for burial. In other fiction features, Sokurov has explored the adaptation of literary works by Shaw (1983's PAINFUL INDIFFERENCE), Flaubert (1989's SAVE AND PROTECT) and Dostoyevsky (1992's WHISPERING PAGES).

Sokurov conaisseurs have long appreciated his series of "elegies". Ranging in duration from 20 to 80 minutes, his elegies are perhaps best described as poetic and visual essays. 1996's ORIENTAL ELEGY won the Best Short Film prize at Oberhausen (Germany).

Sokurov is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, the most recent being 1998's CONFESSION, a 260-minute portrait of young Russian sailors, and 1998's THE KNOT an Nobel Prize-winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Also notable is the 1996 six-hour SPIRITUAL VOICES, an epic study of Russian border guards.
For nearly 10 years, Sokurov's films were banned in the former Soviet Union. With support from the late (and then-exiled) cinema master Andrei Tarkovski, Sokurov's films were eventually granted screening permission in 1986.

Sokurov made his first feature film, THE LONELY VOICE OF MAN, in 1978 as his graduation project from the Moscow Film School (VGIK). The film was rejected by the school, as well as the Soviet government. This was also the case for all the numerous films he made at the Leningrad Documentary film Studios.
Sokurov was born in Siberia in 1951. Because of his military father, he spent much of his childhood in Poland and Turkistan. He studied history at the University of Gorky before attending film school. Since 1982 Sokurov has lived in St. Petersburg.

Filmography:
FICTION FEATURES
1978 - THE LONELY VOICE OF MAN
1983 - PAINFUL INDIFFERENCE
1988 - DAYS OF ECLIPSE
1989 - SAVE AND PROTECT (MRS BOVARY)
1990 - THE SECOND CIRCLE
1992 - STONE
1993 - WHISPERING PAGES
1996 - MOTHER AND SON
1999 - MOLOCH
2000 - TAURUS

THE ELEGIES
1985 ELEGY
1986 MOSCOW ELEGY
1989 PETERSBURG ELEGY
1989 SOVIET ELEGY
1990 SIMPLE ELEGY
1993 ELEGY FROM RUSSIA
1996 ORIENTAL ELEGY

DOCUMENTARIES
1978 MARIA
1979 SONATA FOR HITLER
1981 SONATA FOR VIOLA
1982 AND NOTHING MORE
1984 EVENING SACRIFICE
1985 PATIENT LABOUR
1990 TO THE EVENTS IN TRANSCAUCASIA
1990 A RETROSPECTION OF LENINGRAD
1991 AN EXAMPLE OF INTONATION
1995 SPIRITUAL VOICES
1996 HUBERT ROBERT : A FORTUNATE LIFE
1997 HUMBLE LIFE
1998 CONFESSION
1998 THE KNOT
1998 DIALOGUES WITH SOLJENITSYNE
1999 DOLCE