The Province of Lost Film 46 minutes; color; Russian with English subtitles; digital video; 2005. Dir.: A. Gershtein, T. Lahusen, T. McDonald, A. Nikitin; camera: A. Gershtein. "Cinema Paradiso Soviet style," The Province of Lost Film is about the magic and nostalgia of watching film collectively: in a movie house; a workers' club; or at night, on an improvised screen hung in the village square. Employees of the former distribution and exhibition network, projectionists, and viewers from central Russia reflect upon the unique and already bygone experience of the Soviet experiment of "cinefication," which sought to bring the screen to every corner of the Soviet Union. Thus, the film captures one of the lost opportunities of the socialist dream. Shot in the Summer of 2004 in the province of Ryazan, the film tells the story of post-Soviet Russia in a new key. It provides a unique insight into what viewers and creators took from cinema. The film is a weave of life stories and film clips. From the collective-farm classic of the Stalin era Cossacks of the Kuban to the hugely popular Indian film of 1955 The Vagabond, or the 1961 Soviet Technicolor extravaganza, The Amphibious Man, and archival footage of the process of cinefication itself, they all remind us of the immortal power of cinema and its place in the mind and heart of the individual. e88 Written by David Bennett