2012 New Releases Catalogue November - Learningemall.com

the blockade were forbidden. The Soviet
propaganda machine transformed the
survivors into a symbol of national heroism,
silencing any questions about Stalin's war
policy and its toll on the lives of ordinary
Russians.
In 900 DAYS, Gorter employs newly
declassified material from the Secret
Service archives that reveals, in coldly
impersonal statistics, the extent of
cannibalism in the blockaded city and the
population's fury with their own authorities.
Footage of present-day Russian
memorials to the survivors of the siege
illustrate the persistence of the official,
heroic account of the event even in light of
this new information.
Elsewhere in the film, survivors speak
openly, many for the first time in their lives,
about their experiences and the post-war
censorship. Their painful memories
overshadow the public myth in which
some of them had previously participated.
All their lives they have been told they
were heroes who guided the country
toward victory, but they are increasingly
aware that true recognition of their
traumatic experience and the ruinous
policies that allowed it to continue is still,
even after half a century, far away.
Reviews