The Miracle of Saint Anthony (ЧУДО СВЯТОГО АНТОНИО). 2012. Portugal. Written and directed by Sergei Loznitsa. DCP courtesy Curtas Portugal. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 40 min.
St. Anthony the Abbot, also known as Anthony of the Desert and Anthony the Hermit, is widely celebrated as the patron saint of animals (a distinction he shares with St. Francis of Assisi) and is revered by basket weavers, brush makers, and butchers. Said to have cured a farrow of piglets of their blindness, Anthony is accompanied by a wild boar, his grateful companion, in paintings by Pisanello and Hieronymus Bosch. A blessing of animals is celebrated at the Vatican on Anthony’s feast day of January 17. Sergei Loznitsa affectionately observes the villagers of Santo António de Mixões da Serra, in the Valdreu region of Northern Portugal, as they celebrate their patron saint on June 13, the day of his death in 1231. They ascend the mountain roads to the beautiful Baroque church square for the blessing of their cows, horses, rabbits, dogs, cats, and chickens. Long fascinated by processions, festivals, and other mass gatherings—by ancient rituals passed from generation to generation—Loznitsa here focuses on ideas of communal faith.
The Old Jewish Cemetery (СТАРОЕ ЕВРЕЙСКОЕ КЛАДБИЩЕ). 2014. Latvia. Written and directed by Sergei Loznitsa. No dialogue. 20 min.
Before the Second World War, an estimated 40,000 Jews lived in Riga, the capital of independent Latvia. Representing slightly more than 10 percent of the city’s population, the vibrant Jewish community made outsize contributions to its cultural, political, mercantile, and religious life. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and its occupation of Riga in July 1941 put an end to all that. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Over three days in November and December 1941 alone, at least 25,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were shot in the Rumbula Forest. By the city’s liberation in 1944, almost all of the Jews in Riga had been killed.” Sergei Loznitsa’s contemporary film is a meditation on historical amnesia and memorialization. The filmmaker observes ordinary Latvians enjoying a day in the park on the outskirts of the city, seemingly oblivious to its origins in 1725 as the foundation of Riga’s first Jewish cemetery (Jews were not permitted to bury their dead within the city limits), and then, some 215 years later, as the site of a mass grave for more than 1,000 Jews murdered in the ghetto. By the 1960s all traces of the Jewish community had been erased, together with any shame of Latvian complicity during the war. The tombstones were repurposed as building material during postwar reconstruction and the site commemorated anew as “The Park of the Communist Brigades.”
Une nuit a l’opera (A Night at the Opera). 2020. France. Written and directed by Sergei Loznitsa. DCP courtesy Atoms & Void. No dialogue. 19 min.
Not to be confused with the Marx Brothers movie (though Charlie Chaplin makes an appearance), A Night at the Opera is an archival tribute to the Palais Garnier in Paris. It’s hard not to be dazzled by the procession of tuxedoed, bejeweled, and festooned high-society guests, among them Queen Elizabeth, Brigitte Bardot, Grace Kelly, and the Aga Khan. But the showstopper is Maria Callas making her belated Parisian debut on December 19, 1958, excerpted from Roger Benamou’s film La grande nuit de l’Opera, as she performs “Una voce poco fa” from Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville while a besotted Aristotle Onassis looks on.
Paleontology Lesson. 2025. Netherlands. Written and directed by Sergei Loznitsa. DCP courtesy Atoms & Void. In Ukranian; English subtitles. 12 min.
Shortly after the “all clear” is signaled following an air raid on Kyiv, a group of young Ukrainian students receives a lesson on paleontology and species extinction at the Natural History Museum, one that seems to bear unsettling and macabre resonances with today.
Champ de Mars. 2026. Written and directed by Sergei Loznitsa. US premiere. DCP courtesy Atoms & Void. In Ukranian; English subtitles. 12 min.
Commemorating the “heroes who made a significant contribution to the struggle for independence of Ukraine,” soldiers and families gather on the last Saturday of every month to bury and honor the dead. Adorning the graves are the ubiquitous blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine (with and without the trident, or tryzub, which represents sovereignty and resistance), but also the red-and-black flags that have become an unofficial war banner since the 2014 Russian invasion. Originally the flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Banderites of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists before, during, and after the Second World War—the “blood-and-soil” symbolism of red and black is rooted, perhaps, in the martial iconography of 12th-century Slavs or 16th-century Zaporozhian Cossacks—this banner today has come to represent patriotism at its most militant, proudly embraced by various nationalist factions, including the fascists.
Program approx. 103 min.