Three centuries of Russian history come to life as an astounding scrolling pageant in the film that won the Visions Award at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival. A technical tour de force, RUSSIAN ARK is intricately choreographed as one unbroken tracking shot gliding through the Hermitage, the great St. Petersburg museum of art and treasure. Sokurov’s central character, the 19th-century French Marquis de Custine, is the lively guide, bringing the viewer into peepshow proximity to figures including Catherine II and Peter the Great, and a host of others, as the trek through 33 glorious rooms traverses time up to and including the present.