Bread Day

There's not a lot to distract from the bottom-line routines of life in snowbound Township 3, Zhikharevo, 80km from Saint Petersburg, which is why the predominantly elderly villagers are understandably exercised by the once weekly arrival of the bread. It's loaves all round, unless the shop runs out, or, like pushy Volodya (playing hard to the camera), you crave an extra order of black bread. This minimalist meditation on life and landscape was seen on the UK's Channel 4 TV several years back. Propose such a calm, considered film to them now [2003] and you wouldn't get past security, which is a pity because Bread Day's approach still compares with that of C4, at least in respect of its reality TV fetish. That writer/director Dvortsevoy turns the absolute concentration of his camera on goats, dogs and sheds as much as on people should not obscure the work's central interest in how to maintain one's place on earth.