The "Siege Blood" film to be screened and considered at the Presidential Library

Cinema club meeting will be held on January 29, 2019 at 15:30 in the Presidential Library marking the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege. The program includes a concert performance by the laureates and nominees of the Vladimir Spivakov International Sponsored Foundation, as well as a meeting with the film crew and a documentary film about the work of the donor service in the besieged Leningrad “Siege Blood”.

The documentary is based on the script of the Petersburg writer Dmitry Karalis, directed by Eleonora Lukyanova. Historical shots are interspersed with comments by famous Petersburg residents who dealt with the siege theme - in this way the writer Daniil Granin, who was a consultant to the film, appears in the film frame. This was his last interview.

The film of Dmitry Karalis and Eleonora Lukyanova is the first and so far the only film about the activities of the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion, which continued to work during the siege of the city. Only in the first months of the siege - from September to the end of 1941 - 35 thousand people donated blood for the needs of the front. Next year - over 55 thousand of Leningrad residents. However, many donors themselves suffered from dystrophy. “There were no other blood receipts in the army of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts. There was only blood from Leningrad”, - the script author noted.

“The film raised a topic that no one has yet tried to solve”, - says actor Nikolai Burov, who reads the offscreen text in the film. - The authors wonder how a hungry person, chronically hungry, can give blood to another person. I was struck by the video, I watched a lot of documentary about the siege, but I have never met the shots shown in this film”.

The plans for the organization of large-scale projects marking the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege were formed in 2018. In November, a round table was held at the Presidential Library, where the campaign to collect documents related to the siege was announced. At this point, about 200 people responded to the call to share testimonies about that time, about 900 storage units were transferred for digitization.

With the participation of the Presidential Library in St. Petersburg the Unified City Information Center which coordinates the work of the media, public organizations and cultural institutions covering events dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege, has been created.

As part of the “Siege Diary” a specialist of the Presidential Library talks weekly about life in the besieged city on the Saint-Petersburg Channel.

The Presidential Library’s portal provides access to a virtual tour of the exhibition halls of the temporarily closed State Museum of Defence and Siege of Leningrad and get familiar with the electronic collection “Defence and Siege of Leningrad”, which includes official documents, periodicals, memories of Leningrad residents, food cards, photographs and newsreels.

Traditional courage lessons for schoolchildren in 2019, declared in Russia as the year of the centenary anniversary of Daniil Granin, will be based, among other things, on the writer's works on the Great Patriotic War.

The cinema club meeting and the screening of the “Siege Blood” documentary film, will be held in the multimedia hall of the Presidential Library at the address: Senate Square, 3.

Please confirm your presence by January 28, 2019 and provide data for access to the Presidential Library by phone: (812) 305-16-35, 8 921 594-16-13 or by email: smolina@prlib.ru Elena Viktorovna Smolina.

Accreditation of media representatives is available until 15:00, January 28, 2018.

Please forward applications for accreditation following the attached form with the note “Media Accreditation” at media@prlib.ru, hudjakova@prlib.ru, Alexandra Khudyakova, the Presidential Library’s press-service, tel. (812) 305-16-21, ext. 167; mob. +7 981 788-28-08.

It is necessary to specify the full name, name of the media, date and place of birth, passport data (series, number, place of registration), a list of carry-on equipment, contact numbers.

Please note that the entrance to the Presidential Library is carried out only by prior request and upon showing a passport: participants and guests of the event go through entrance № 1, media representatives go through entrance N2.