Age of Delirium

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is David Satter, an expert on Russia and frequent guest on Frontpage Magazine, whose new film, “Age of Delirium,” about the fall of the Soviet Union will premiere Friday, March 16, in New York at the Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South at 7 pm. Details about the screening which is open to the public are contained in this Facebook link.

The film is based on David Satter’s book of the same name.

Readers of Frontpagemag.com in the New York area are cordially invited to attend.

FP: David Satter, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Congratulations on your new film. What can you tell us about it?

Satter: The film, “Age of Delirium,” is the story of the fall of the Soviet Union as lived and experienced by the Soviet people. The film shows what it meant to construct an entire state on the basis of a false idea and how truthful information led to the Soviet Union’s rapid and unstoppable collapse.

FP: How did you become a film maker?

Satter: It was an accident really. People were impressed with the cinematic qualities of the book and urged me to try to put it on film. The idea quickly found backers and although I had help from a Russian director, it eventually became clear that I would have to take charge of the story telling myself.

The method employed is filmed interviews with persons whose experiences illustrate the forces that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. The film tells the story of Alexander Shatravka, who crossed the Finnish border only to be handed back by the Finns and tortured in a mental hospital; Nina Smirnova, a crippled girl who prayed for relief at a religious shrine and then began to be persecuted by the communist authorities after she miraculously began to walk; and the young men of the city of Shadrinsk who believed in the Soviet ideology only to learn the reality of the Soviet system while fighting in Afghanistan.

FP: What do you think the film achieves?

Satter: By recreating through personal stories the eerie reality of the Soviet Union, the film shows what it meant to live in a society based on a false idea and the tragic consequences of the Soviet attempt to remake human nature. In the end, the film illuminates the workings of an ideological society, the very type of society that would be most likely to use weapons of mass destruction. It shows how such a society creates its own fictitious universe and it gives insight into the state of Russian today where the neo-Soviet leaders stand again at the edge of a moral abyss.

FP: Thank you David Satter, good luck on this new film.

We encourage all of our readers in the New York area to go see “Age of Delirium” which will premiere Friday, March 16, in New York at the Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South at 7 pm.

For more information see this Facebook link.2908/).