Siberian Diary — Days At Apanas

140 minutes, BetaSP, 4:3, colour, PAL

Siberian Diary — Days at Apanas is a return to the land already known, an already informed sequel. The slowly discovering document draws fine but firm sequences of poetic cuttings and intimate interviews with inhabitants of a small village called Apanas, who are covered with snow and cut off from the rest of the world for six month a year. The harsh climate dictates the tone of the film, as if the geographical location itself contributed to the radical aesthetics of it. Despite vastness of his films, Pilz’s filming is not light, results of his work, so active inside the images, are admirable, he doesn’t mirror the scenes, he creates them. He does not capture poetry, he tries to reach bigger, maximum materiality in structure, he does not experiment with editing, he searches inside, and the quiet pragmatic spots in his films are of the most intensity. Pilz regards a film as a tool for mutual understanding within the memory of history and culture, understanding that does not cease to exist — like humanity — although there is no response.

Petr Kubica,
Catalogue of the 7^th International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, Czech Republik,
October 2003

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Original title Siberian Diary — Days At Apanas
English title Siberian Diary — Days At Apanas
Produced by Michael Pilz
Concept and realization by Michael Pilz
Cinematography by Michael Pilz
Original sound by Michael Pilz
Music by Szemzö Tibor

Austria 2003
Language English, Russian, Dutch, German
English subtitles

First public screening 30 April 2003, Festival International du Cinéma Nyon

Festivals Nyon (FR), Jihlava (CZ), Kerala (IN)

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