The 34th Message to Man International Film Festival will kick off in just two weeks, on October 18, in St. Petersburg. Today, the Festival unveils its official poster, featuring a signature image created specially for Message to Man by filmmaker Rustam Khamdamov.
This year, in honor of Rustam Khamdamov’s 80th birthday, the Festival will present a special programme titled Dedication to Khamdamov. The section includes film screenings, lectures, a meeting with Khamdamov’s stars, and a premiere photography exhibition. As part of Message to Man, tributes to Khamdamov will be made by actresses Anna Mikhalkova, Svetlana Nemolyaeva, and Elena Morozova, photographers Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev, costume designer Nadezhda Vasilyeva, as well as directors and film scholars Lyubov Arkus and Peter Shepotinnik.
The Festival is held with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, and the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg.
Rustam Usmanovich Khamdamov is an outstanding artist and film director, the creator of his own unique visual language. Khamdamov is called “a mythical author”, “a ghost filmmaker”. His works inspired Kira Muratova and Andrei Konchalovsky; he collaborated with Tonino Guerra, Yuri Lyubimov, and actresses Jeanne Moreau, Elena Solovey, Alla Demidova, Svetlana Nemolyaeva, Renata Litvinova, Anna Mikhalkova, and Elena Morozova. He also worked with musician Pyotr Mamonov, singer Erik Kurmangaliev, ballet dancer Diana Vishneva, and many other outstanding cultural figures. In 2003, Khamdamov became the first Russian artist to have their works included in the Hermitage Museum’s modern collection during their lifetime. Khamdamov’s films were featured in the programmes of the world’s leading film festivals: Cannes, Venice and Rotterdam.
Message to Man Film Festival has always been a platform that brings together not only the cinematic community. Throughout its history, the Festival collaborated with artists, philosophers, writers and photographers, accumulating experience from various professionals, and creating a space for the exchange of knowledge. In 2024, the Festival team turned to Khamdamov. That is how this drawing (author’s variation of the artist’s sketch for the film Diamonds) was born and became the key visual image of the event. This expressive female gaze will be seen on all the Festival’s materials, from the Message to Man poster to the catalogue, brochures and a special merchandise collection.
Poster of the 34th Message to Man IFF is based on an image created by Rustam Khamdamov specially for the Festival.
The special programme Dedication to Khamdamov was born out of the creative partnership between the Festival and the filmmaker’s associates.
The programme will start on October 21 at the Angleterre Cinema Lounge with a double screening of Khamdamov’s films Diamonds and Parallel Voices. Before the screening, costume designer Nadezhda Vasilyeva will speak about her work with Khamdamov.
On October 22, the Angleterre Cinema Lounge will host a lecture by director and film scholar Lyubov Arkus, titled Magician and Outsider. “This is not a story about Khamdamov’s creative work, but a story about the person with whom I have lived much of my life, and the most difficult moment I had to share with him,” says Arkus.
That same night, Peter Shepotinnik will present his rarely seen TV film Khamdamov on Video (1995), restored specially for the festival.
“It is challenging to transcend the raw materiality inherent in filmmaking in order to follow the unstoppable motion of Khamdamov’s thought and his drawing. This motion pulsates everywhere — whether in his reflections on art, or in his works that grace world’s most prestigious galleries, or in a random stroke on a crumpled napkin left on a café table,” says Peter Shepotinnik.
The theme of the female figure remains central to Khamdamov’s artistic universe. On October 25, the Aurora Cinema will host a screening of his film The Bottomless Bag (2017), starring Svetlana Nemolyaeva, Anna Mikhalkova, and Elena Morozova. Khamdamov molds actresses in film like a sculptor: he optically shapes new faces and images. The screening will be preceded by a conversation with the stars of his films about their experience with the master: what does work with Khamdamov demand from an actress, and what it offers in return.
Finally, starting on October 19, the Rodina Cinema will open a photography exhibition featuring the works of Alexander Samoilov, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, and Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev. The exhibition consists of three projects created 30 years apart. The first one was made in 1974 by Alexander Samoilov, a legendary unrecognized genius of Russian photography, around the shooting of Khamdamov’s lost film Unintentional Pleasures. The second one was created three decades later in 2004 by Clavijo-Telepnev during the production of Parallel Voices. The third project was done by the world-renowned photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov, who worked as a photographer on the set of The Bottomless Bag. Separated by a whole era, these three series come together at the Reflections exhibition, which tells the story of a great master’s overtones and glimmers, as seen in various mirrors directed at him by three fellow artists. Photographs by Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev will be shown to the public for the first time.
“In 2024, a woman drawn by Rustam Khamdamov gazes out from the Message to Man’s poster. It is a highly recognizable image that he repeated many times — a graphic incantation which brings from oblivion the beauty that saves worlds.
Khamdamov’s gravitational pull draws artists and photographers to the set, and from this, new worlds, alliances, plots, and fresh evidence of harmony and creativity emerge. By creating a dialogue between three photographers, Alexander Samoilov, Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev, and Gueorgui Pinkhassov, we witness different approaches to interacting and capturing beauty.
The Reflections exhibition serves as a reminder of the core idea for which Message to Man has existed for 34 years: the beauty of the human being, which continues to be the measure of all things,” says Solmaz Guseynova, curator of the exhibition.
