Cookies on FilmShelves
We use essential cookies to keep the site working. With your permission we also use analytics cookies (so we can fix what's broken) and advertising cookies (so the ads you see are more relevant). Read our privacy policy.
You'll still see ads on the free tier — rejecting just means they won't be personalised.

Morrison weaves another unique and mesmerising document reflecting how life, history, and art intersect, transform and forever endure on film. In 2016, four reels of Derevensky Detektiv The Village Detective, a 1969 Russian film starring the Soviet-era character actor Mikhail Zharov, were found in a fisherman's net off the Icelandic coast. The recovered reels lead filmmaker Bill Morrison (Dawson City: Frozen Time) on another cinematic odyssey of mystery and discovery. The decayed footage is combined with original music by David Lang, and interwoven with interviews and clips from Zharov's lengthy filmography to form an alchemical story of its star - and of Soviet cinema itself. “Bill Morrison, the poet laureate of lost films” Glenn Kenny, New York Times “Hovering at the intersection of reappropriation, preservation, history, music, and art, any one of his works will haunt you for the rest of your life” Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic

The Village Detective: A Song Cycle (2021)
81 min
Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.