Oriental elegy
Subtitle: Élégie orientale
By: [presented by] Lenfilm Studios, NHK ; written and directed by Alexander Sokurov
Contributors: Lenfilʹm; Medici Arts (Firm)
Publisher: Medici Arts International
Published: 2009
Place of publication: [Paris]
Language: rus
Format: [videorecording] =
Number of pages: 43
Subjects: Social life and customs
Other titles: Élégie orientale; Vostochnaya elegiya; Eastern elegy.; Orientaru ereji.; 3 films by Alexander Sokurov.
Description: Oriental elegy: The first among the "Japanese" videos by Alexander Sokurov, where real people are represented in their normal conditions and surroundings. They are simple people, but not ordinary. Their originality lies in the special nature of their souls, where poetry and mythology mean more than the symbols of contemporary reality.

A humble life: An unhurried and detailed report from an old solitary house, lost in the mountains, in the village of Aska (Nara Prefecture), Japan, where an old woman, Umeno Matsuyoshi, lives alone.

Dolce: A form of documentary about a well-known Japanese writer, Toshio Shimao, who died in 1986, his widow and their daughter. It serves as a framework to underline the film's deep insight into the biographical narration. There is but one way to touch that world, to feel its exquisite flavour and its perverse pain - to do it as in a lyrical music piece, tenderly, dolce.
Notes: Oriental elegy: Originally produced in 1996.

A humble life: Originally produced in 1997.

Dolce: Originally produced in 2000.

Issued in container with: A humble life and Dolce.

Oriental elegy: cinematography, Aleksei Fyodorov.

A humble life: Cinematography, Aleksei Fyodorov ; editor, Leda Semyonova ; original music, Algirdas Paulavicius.

Dolce: Story, Toshio Shimao ; cinematography, Koshiro Otsu ; editors, Sergei Ivanov, Aleksei Yankovsky ; original music, Nikita Bogoslovsky.

DVD ; region 0 ; NTSC 4:3.

Dialogue in Russian with English and French subtitles.