In the year marking the 200th anniversary of the first photograph, the Message to Man International Film Festival invites audiences to explore the photographic archive of Yuri Klimenko. Photographs from the artist’s collection will be presented at two festival venues. Yuri Klimenko himself will present the exhibition to festival audiences.
Yuri Klimenko is best known as a cinematographer. His filmography includes more than 50 works, spanning nearly half a century of filmmaking and legendary creative collaborations with Alexander Kaidanovsky, Rustam Khamdamov, Sergei Solovyov, Ali Khamraev, Alexei Uchitel, Stanislav Govorukhin, Alexei German, Sergei Parajanov, Kira Muratova, and Georgiy Daneliya.
In Klimenko’s hands, the camera captures with exquisite precision both the ephemeral aesthetic of Rustam Khamdamov and Alexei German’s hyperrealism. Klimenko’s films are full of discoveries, mysteries, revelations, coded metaphors, and imagery — everything that makes the partnership between director and cinematographer successful, and a film an event: a milestone welcomed with interest by audiences, fellow filmmakers, and international festival juries alike.
Yuri Klimenko began taking photographs at school. In fifth grade, his mother gave him a Zenit camera and took him to the photo lab at the company where she worked. The magic of the darkroom captivated him once and for all. Since then, he has always kept a camera close at hand. Even on film sets, it sits alongside his motion-picture camera: he observes landscapes, chooses locations, studies faces, takes camera tests, and photographs moments to remember.
Klimenko is also a svetopistets in the classical sense of the word — a painter with light. His photographs resemble Eastern monochrome painting. The artist himself calls his works “chemistry”: in them, the connection between the mundane and the magical emerges from the dense darkness of the black-and-white image.
Curator: Solmaz Guseynova.
Producer: Alexander Maksimov.
The photography exhibition consists of two parts, presented at two venues:
“Shadows. Photographs by Yuri Klimenko”
17–24 October | Opening: October 17 at 2:00 PM
Daily: 11:00 AM–10:45 PM
Admission to the exhibition in the cinema foyer is free.
Rodina Cinema Center | 12 Karavannaya Street, St. Petersburg
“The Cinematic World of Yuri Klimenko”
October 17–November 22
Wed–Sun: 12:00 PM–8:00 PM
During the festival, the gallery is open daily. Admission is free.
“А-Я” Gallery | 60 Nevsky Prospekt (courtyard of the Avrora Cinema)