Russian Empire

The "Russian Empire" project by Leonid Parfyonov, dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Russian Empire and the founding of Saint-Petersburg, is a contemporary view on 300 years of the Russian state. "Russian Empire" required weeks of shooting in the Russian capitals and dozens of trips around the current and former territories of the country, to unique places which had never been filmed in the past. From a Polish village which Peter the Great once passed by, to the roofs of the Hermitage and tiny German towns from where the Russian empresses had come from. The program includes filming at the sites of battles fought by the Russian armies, from Rome to Beirut, and the sites of the national disasters from Sebastopol to Eastern Prussia. The program includes historic anecdotes, real diaries, little-known documentational evidence and letters of the top personalities of the Empire. The "Russian Empire" is a personal history of this country, a TV investigation of the Russian imperial ideal which is still alive for both its supporters and adversaries. (Leonid Parfenov was dismissed shortly after completion of this program under political pressure from the current Russian government led by Putin).