Year: 2009
Country:
RUSSIA
Language:
Russian
Run Time:
83 minutes
In WARD NO. 6 the physician leads a documentary film crew through the mental hospital, stopping to chat with patients along the way. The off-camera interviewer asks, "What has happened to Dr. Ragin?" And why is he now a patient in the mental hospital where he was once the chief doctor? As the camera shifts to Dr. Ragin, we see a quiet, sad-eyed man wearing a bathrobe. He doesn't speak. And what we learn in this pseudo-documentary, which deliberately blurs the lines between fiction and reality, is that the doctor cares little about medicine or the patients for whom he was responsible. That is, until he meets a patient he believes is a prophet. The film, based on Anton Chekhov's 1892 short story, combines interviews with real patients and actors speaking Chekhov's words. Visual storytelling – creating "home movies" and having Dr. Ragin's friends and colleagues talk directly to the camera – effectively paints a portrait of a man who slowly loses touch with the reality around him. (In Russian with subtitles) – C.K.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 7:40 PM
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Screenplay
Aleksandr Borodyansky, Karen Shakhnazarov
Directors
Karen Shakhnazarov, Aleksandr Gornovsky
Filmography
Aleksander Gornovsky: "20 Cigarettes" (2007), WARD NO. 6 (2009); Karen Shakhnazarov: "Kind Men" (1979), "Jazzman" (1983), "Winter Evening in Gagry" (1985), "The Messenger Boy" (1987), "Zero City" (1988), "The Assassin of the Czar" (1991), "Dreams" (1993), "American Daughter" (1995), "Day of the Full Moon" (1998), "Poisons or the World History of Poisoning" (2001), "The Rider Named Death" (2004), "Vanished Empire" (2008) WARD NO. 6 (2009
Producer
Galina Shadur, Karen Shakhnazarov
Cinematography
Aleksandr Kuznetsov
Editing
Irina Kozhemyakina
Principal Cast
Vladimir Ilyin, Aleksei Vertkov, Aleksandr Pankratov-Chyorny, Yevgeni Stychkin
Seagull Films
Email: seagullfilms.office@gmail.com
http://www.seagullfilms.com
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