Last night I watched one of the various Chris Marker documentaries that have been recently released on DVD in North America. This one, The Last Bolshevik (1992), discusses the filmmaking career of Alexander Ivanovich Medvedkin, who was born in 1900 and died in 1989. These dates are important within the contect of the documentary because Marker situates Medvedkin’s life within the greater historical backdrop of Russian and Soviet history. Medvedkin, after all, participated in the Russian Civil War of 1920-22, and he would make his films alongside such other Soviet filmmakers as Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov and Roman Karmen. Even the death of Stalin in 1953 would allow Medvedkin to attempt once more to incorporate more artistic freedom in his later cinematic work, however scant that work would prove to be.
In any case, the documentary uses Medvedkin’s example to explore the interplay between political repression and artistic liberty. If I remember correctly, Marker states that all of Medvedkin’s famous films from the 1930’s were either immediately banned before release to the public, or banned after just one showing. Even his most famous film, Happiness, was banned after a single showing.
The theme of political repression and how an artist chooses to deal with it reminded me of certain characters in William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central, especially the character of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose dilemna is very similar to that of Medvekin in this documentary. Moreover, the actual Soviet documentarian Roman Karmen makes several appearances in The Last Bolshevik, always shooting on the front lines of every battlefield, be it in Spain or Germany or Russia.
The historical Soviet footage that Marker edited into this documentary is very impressive to watch. Marker evinces quite a fetish for Leftist history, and Soviet history in particular reappears in several of his other films that I have seen so far. In discussing Medvedkin’s life and career, he did a great job situating them within that larger backdrop that is the Soviet Union.
