Zagorsk1992

Finding myself in Russia in 1991 to shoot a couple of documentaries on the subjects of the decline of Jewish Orthodoxy and a second on the rise of the Russian orthodox church I came upon a cathedral that had been used by the KGB to store records of the citizens that were under surveillance. The Cathedral had been emptied of these and was now being slowly restored… One of the markers of the Christian Orthodox religion is the virtuoso playing in the bell tower for he bells when the people are called to come worship - sometimes played by old babushkas hanging out of the bell tower and laughing gleefully - but in this case played single handily by a violinist of the Leningrad orchestra who also played rock guitar in a rock band. Beneath the bell tower the old prayed whilst above the young were tolling the bell for communism at a cataclysmic level (listen to the playing) and somehow there was a transmission of older values going on, unseen by the emerging authorities. Later though Putin gained power and things changed yet again…