Portland Documentary & eXperimental Film Festival

“Impressive visual material of the siege of Leningrad as a breathtaking reanimation of reality. The images comprise only material Sergei Loznitsa found in the archives in Moscow about the siege of Leningrad during the World War II. By providing the originally silent images with a meticulously reconstructed and almost perfect soundtrack, the scenes from everyday life under siege seem to be set in the present. By not intervening in the montage but giving the scenes room to tell a story, the scenes transcend the specific historic events and lead a new life. They do not evoke memories of the past, but become a breathtaking reanimation of reality.”

How Little We Know of Our Neighbours is an experimental documentary about Britain’s Mass Observation Movement and its relationship to contemporary issues regarding surveillance, public self-disclosure, and privacy. At its center is a look at the multiple roles cameras have played in public space, starting in the 1880s, with the introduction of the hand-held cameras. The film proceeds to trace the history of Mass Observation from anthropological studies in 1930s through its reincarnation as a civil spy unit during World War II to its present-day uses in police surveillance, web cams and reality television, all the while questioning our notions of privacy and self-definition.