'The Other Pushkin', video by Maria Arendt
 
One of the central themes of Pushkin’s writing is the death of genius. But the death of a poet is never accidental and nobody knew this better than Pushkin himself. And though we may speculate on what Pushkin might have written had he survived that duel, the poet himself famously said that he’d already written everything he felt necessary. The Arendt family felt personally involved in this tragedy of Russian culture because their great-great-grand-father was the physician who unfortunately could not save the life of the fatally wounded poet. Like the Pushkinists, they too wonder what might have happened to Pushkin had there been a vial of penicillin in Dr Arendt’s medical case and the poet had miraculously survived. Having gone through clinical death, he could’ve changed dramatically – possibly even abandoned literature, and, being the genius he was, gone on to look for other means of self-expression. The video views the world through the eyes of the great author.
 
In the role of the young Pushkin is the artist Alexander Petrelli; in the role of the elderly Pushkin is the artist William Brui while Konstantin Zvezdochetov plays the role of Dr Arendt.