Life As It Is

Life on a Russian farm continues as if things have never changed. This short portrait of an elderly Russian woman has been composed as a short feature film. One by one, in black and white, the routine scenes from her daily life pass by. Wearing her inevitable headscarf, she walks through a bare forest, balances the books or scolds a colleague. The people she talks to remain invisible; the camera purely concentrates on the woman and the serene, but bleak environment, with carefully framed shots by the Russian camerawoman Irina Uralskaya. A voice-over or any further comments have been omitted. Although life in the country is undoubtedly very hard, the woman has a romantic disposition. She hums songs or listens to music on the radio, and reads out loud personal ads and horoscopes in a Russian newspaper. All the time, she is aware of the presence of the camera. When she tells about a man whom she once wanted to force to stay with her, she says: ‘All movie producers would kill for such a scene.’