A Soldier's Dream Evening Sacrifice Simple Elegy Moscow Elegy

These four shorts capture the ironies and complexities of Russian life as only Sokurov can.

A Soldier's Dream is a small fragment of Sokurov's epic Spiritual Voices, intended as a gift to film historian Dr. Hans Schlegel, a man who helped many Eastern European filmmakers before the fall of the Soviet Union. Young soldiers rest for a while during their patrol outside the border of Afghanistan. Their dreaming while on this grave duty becomes a parable of Russia's plight. (1995; 11 mins.)

In Evening Sacrifice, Sokurov shows the official parade and fireworks of May Day, accompanying it with the evening Orthodox prayer of repentance. (1984-87; 20 mins.)

Simple Elegy is compiled from footage shot in Vilnius in 1990--some of it taken in the office of the president--during the Russia-imposed economic blockade of Lithuania. (1990; 20 mins.)

Sokurov himself describes Moscow Elegy as a portrait of Andrei Tarkovsky--speaking only about what he has left in his Motherland, and what was going on during those years in the West, where he had to work in exile. (1986-87; 90 mins.)