Gabrielle Pfeiffer
director • writer • producer
FACING THE DEAD
Documentary Commission:
Arte
Winner, Golden Gate Award,
San Francisco International Film Festival
Director:
Gabrielle Pfeiffer
Producer:
Director of Photography:
Valentin Savenkov
Editor:
Gabrielle Pfeiffer
Locations:
Russia, United Kingdom
2005
International Sales:
German United Distributors
www.germanunited.com
Broadast: Belgium, Belarus, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland
Festivals, Screenings:
Berkeley, Boston, Bryn Athyn, Cambridge, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Monterey, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Osnabrück, Port Townsand, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Cruz,
Santa Rosa, Washington, D.C
In the years that Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, some 20 million citizens, so-called “enemies of the people”, were killed or perished in labor camps. To own a photograph of any of these people was punishable by death. Families cut loved ones out of group portraits, school children blacked revolutionary heroes out of their history books, and the secret police archived or destroyed the rest. In FACING THE DEAD, filmmaker Gabrielle Pfeiffer travels through today’s Russia on a quest for the lost faces of a generation. Along the way, Russians tell their incredible stories of desperate efforts to hide cherished family portraits at a time when owning a forbidden photograph could mean the difference between life and death.
