An Oral History of the Siege of Leningrad

This documentary was produced with the culmination of material collected over the course of the entire semester. I conducted multiple interviews, gathered documents, and researched information that allowed me to create a documentary about the Siege of Leningrad with an oral history component.

I realized that in order to have the best interview possible, I would have to first ask questions that would be the broad, in order to give Ksenia the chance to tell many different stories, yet still specific to a particular topic. This was a challenging aspect of the process but it eventually gave me some of the most important moments of the documentary. I was able to improve my conversational skills and knowledge of Russian to the point where I could ask follow-up questions and be able to get to the heart of important memories during the interviews themselves so that I would eventually include in my final project. I also received many photographs and documents from my interviewee that helped me to tell her story.

For the project, I first wanted to make sure that the beginning of my documentary told the history of the siege, as many people are unaware of it. Next, out of the many stories that were shared to me during my interviews with Ksenia, I eventually chose to include two, one about an experience Ksenia had while she was young and walking with her grandmother outside and witnessed something traumatizing, and another about how she found compassion for the German prisoners of war who were in the city after the siege. For me, these stories showed a human face of the siege like no other.

I already had experience creating films using Adobe Premiere Pro, so it was relatively easy for me to put together the clips and music. Overall, I think the ambience of the film was greatly influenced by the music and I think it added another layer to the emotional aspect as the music during the majority of the film was from Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony which is part of the siege’s history.

Creating this project was very impactful for me as a student and a person. Overall, my goal is that through this documentary, people are able to humanize one of the most devastating experiences in World War II, and gain perspective from Ksenia’s powerful stories and experiences.