The signature visual image for the 34th Message to Man International Film Festival was created specially for the event by filmmaker and artist Rustam Khamdamov.
This year, in honor of Rustam Khamdamov’s 80th birthday, the Festival presents a special programme titled Dedication to Khamdamov.
It is hard to find parallels for Khamdamov’s art—let alone within Russian filmmaking, especially in its current iteration. His figure seems to stand alone (or rather, diverge from any trajectories), and in today’s Russian cinema, he remains unmatched and without artistic kin.
As is well-known, Khamdamov’s biography is largely composed of lacunas and disappearances. Yet, his world is so cohesive and luminous that we perceive it as a singular, unchanging universe—from his VGIK debut In the Mountains of My Heart (1967) to his latest The Bottomless Bag (2017). When compared with the filmographies of his contemporaries, Khamdamov’s unwavering idiosyncrasies and steady reference points become even more remarkable. Rooted in another era’s cinema but completely remodelled, the exotic, fluorescent universe inhabited by his creations is fundamentally impervious. It thrives in the seclusion of an ivory tower, where Khamdamov occasionally elevates fragments of modernity, yet he himself never descends to the face this modernity.
In May of this year, the Message to Man team made a bold proposal, asking Khamdamov to create the signature visual image for the 34th Festival. To our surprise, he agreed. His drawing, created specially for Message to Man, may be found here. From the onset, the team had intended to pay homage to the master, and the programme Dedication to Khamdamov is that intention coming to life.
At Message to Man, tributes to Khamdamov will be given by actresses Anna Mikhalkova, Svetlana Nemolyaeva, and Elena Morozova; photographers Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev; costume designer Nadezhda Vasilyeva; and directors and film scholars Lyubov Arkus and Peter Shepotinnik.
And, of course, we will revisit Khamdamov’s films, for the history of Russian cinema would be incomparably poorer—and duller—without them.
Rustam Khamdamov’s biography
Born in 1944 in Tashkent. Khamdamov did not receive a formal art education but began drawing early, at the age of five. In 1965, he entered VGIK (Grigory Chukhrai’s workshop), where he directed his graduation project In the Mountains of My Heart (1967, co-directed with Irina Kiseleva), marking his early triumph. However, his journey in cinema has been marked by interruptions. Unintentional Pleasures (1974) remained unfinished, with the negatives ordered to be destroyed by the State Cinema Committee. His next film, Anna Karamazoff (1991) starring Jeanne Moreau, was included in the Cannes Film Festival competition but only screened once before the negative vanished with French copyright holders, preventing the film’s release.
Between films in the 1970s and 80s, he worked extensively in painting and graphics and as a costume designer for Andrei Konchalovsky and Ali Khamraev. From 1992 to 1995, Khamdamov lived in Paris, working anonymously as an artist for the haute couture houses Krizia and Pollini and designing jewelry for the American company Russian World Gallery. It was only in the mid-2000s, after turning 60, that he resumed filmmaking, directing Parallel Voices (2005), the short film Diamonds (2010), and The Bottomless Bag (2017).
From his first film, Khamdamov became a legendary figure among colleagues. He inspired Kira Muratova, and major figures in cinema like Andrei Konchalovsky, Sergei Solovyov, and Tonino Guerra recognized his influence and sought to support him. As Guerra noted, Khamdamov’s “scratch-drawings, born in a dream and frozen at dawn forever, delighted Visconti and Antonioni.”
Khamdamov reflects on his work: “I am far from realistic cinema. I find it more comfortable to exist beyond real things and only know my own world,” he explains. “The past gives me detachment, an escape from flat realism. I think it began with silent films, which Blok called ’electric dreams in reality.’ I’ve been constantly inventing cinema without an end, with infinite compositions. Of course, I was left apart. And I stand alone still.” He could also describe his cinema in words that he used to describe films by Parajanov and Fellini: “Material well-being in new relations. From all seven notes. No atonality.”
His accolades include the Triumph Prize for highest achievements in art (1996), the Cultural Heritage of the Nation Grand Prix (2003), and Special Jury Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival for The Bottomless Bag (2017).
Khamdamov’s works are featured in the State Tretyakov Gallery collection, and in 2003, he became the first Russian artist to have their works included in the Hermitage’s contemporary collection during their lifetime. In 2006, he served on the jury of the Message to Man International Film Festival.