Steadicam, coupled with the rise of digital filmmaking technology, made possible the long-unrealized dream of many a director: a feature film consisting of a single, unbroken shot. Not just a dazzling technical feat, Alexander Sokurov’s masterpiece is a heady, hallucinatory tour through Russian history, in which a disembodied narrator and his companion wander the opulent, art-filled halls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, slipping through centuries as figures ranging from Pushkin to Catherine the Great swirl about them. The effect of the elaborately choreographed single take is of floating, ghost-like, through time, space, and eternity. An NYFF40 selection.