The Petrified Garden

In The Petrified Garden, one of his least-seen pictures, Gitai again returns to the legend of the Golem and the theme of exile, this time in post-Soviet Russia. Set in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, The Petrified Garden follows an art dealer who travels to Leningrad/St. Petersburg and Birobidzhan (Stalin's Siberian "homeland" for the Jews). There he hopes to reunite a huge sculpted hand that he's inherited with the rest of a mythical statue. With Hanna Schygulla and a score by Simon and Markus Stockhausen. (87 mins.)