Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film. Sergei Loznitsa's State Funeral is showing at Film Forum in New York and Laemmle's Royal in Los Angeles starting May 7, 2021.
INSPIRATION #1
Flaying of Marsyas” (1570 – 1576) by Titian
INSPIRATION #2
Pyramids of Giza
The granddaughter of Dolores Ibarruri recalled that her grandmother, the leader of Spanish communists, used to tell her that when she returned from her first visit to Soviet Russia in 1933, and people asked her about her impressions of the Stalinist Russia, she always answered that in Moscow she felt as if she travelled in time and found herself in Ancient Egypt.
INSPIRATION #3
"The Apotheosis of War” (1871) by Vasily Vereschagin
INSPIRATION #4
Nikolai Narokov’s novel Mnimyje velychiny (Imaginary numbers). First published in New York in 1952.
INSPIRATION #5
Shostakovich’s Symphony No 7.