 The "House of Veteran Stage Performers" in St. Petersburg has by now for more than one hundred years been the final domicile for stage performers who have devoted their entire lives to the theatre and who have here found a place where they are taken care of and are still held in esteem as artistes. The administration of the house pays a pianist to be present at daily rehearsals and in-house concerts, the bedrooms, with their memorabilia and work utensils, are more like studios than functional bedrooms. Currently there are 95 men and women living here: actors, opera singers, dancers, painters and directors from all parts of the erstwhile Soviet Union; here they create their own theatre world and continue to play out their roles Ð both in everyday life as well as on their own in-house stage. In competition with his artiste colleagues, each of them strives to stand once again in the glare of the limelight. They will give their last, great performance in the "House of Veteran Stage Performers". Death, as they know only too well, will only come when they cease to perform. For four years the cineastes Tatiana Yankina and Ralf Brings have been visiting the artistes  old peoples  home on the banks of the Neva, listening to its inhabitants and observing them with sympathy and an appropriate detachment as they go about their activities. Their film shows how the stage veterans defy, with pathos, vanity and a sense of humour, but also with a discipline of iron, the loss of their abilities and of their strength. Their anecdotes and memories reach back to the 20 s: the day Lenin died, the terror of Stalin, new freedom under Khrushchev, all of which Boris Barinov, the Soviet Union s first cabaret performer, used to his advantage as material. It is only a few of them who actually became famous, but, as stage performers, they were all of them figures in public life and regarded themselves as representatives of a culture which the themselves have outlived. The scurrilous everyday occurrences in these stately surroundings produce an equilibrium between comedy and melancholy and lovingly document the utter madness of an ensemble of eccentrics and divas, whilst quieter, more poetic sequences allow us to perceive a dimension which is cogent to all of us; passion as a life-force!