Elegy of a Voyage

'In the beginning was a tree, an autumn tree.' Commissioned by the Boijmans Museum, this intimately narrated journey from Russia to Rotterdam, via rail, road and Finnish ferry, is a melancholy meditation on divinity, time and place in art, purpose (or its lack) and the loneliness of the soul. Passing through misty snowscapes, half-glimpsed cities and the icy night sea-swell - timeless images within contemporary settings - the unseen narrator wanders in a complex limbo of half-formed memories towards the gallery and its canvases. Chopin and Mahler inform this companion piece to writer/director Sokurov's one-take wonder, Russian Ark.