Published on May 30, 2012 by Sweetwords1


Formerly prohibited by Soviet officials and secretly lauded by citizens, Anna Akhmatova's renowned paean "Requiem" testifies to the oppression endured by Russians under Stalin's regime. Passages from this eminent poet's diary are used to study her character, and are combined with discussion of her contemporaries Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Mikhail Sostchenko, to examine the plight of the artist in times of unwavering censorship.
This is a unique moving portrait of the extraordinary Soviet poet, Anna Akhmatova. Although her work was banned and went unpublished for 17 years, her poem "Requiem" became the underground anthem for the millions who suffered under Stalin.
An Official Selection at Sundance and the Seattle International Film Festival.
Director: Semyon Aranovich

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 23 [O.S. June 11] 1889 - March 5, 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova (Russian and Ukrainian: А́нна Ахма́това), was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.
Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935 - 1940), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods - the early work (1912 - 1925) and her later work (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities and she is notable for choosing not to emigrate, and remaining in Russia, acting as witness to the atrocities around her. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism.
Primary sources of information about Akhmatova's life are relatively scant, as war, revolution and the totalitarian regime caused much of the written record to be destroyed. For long periods she was in official disfavour and many of those who were close to her died in the aftermath of the revolution.