September 20: Day Six of the Festival

Briefly about the selected screenings of the 6th day of Message to Man festival.

 

International Competition Program of September 20 covers feature short films. 9 films are divided into 2 screenings. Igor Poplaukhin’s film Calendar, which is included in the program, will also be available for viewing during a meeting with the film’s creative team in Poryadok Slov bookstore.

 

Fanny Ardant will personally introduce a special screening of Maria By Callas about the legendary opera singer. Ms. Ardant is the off-screen voice of the film. The screening starts at 19:00, and at 14:00 a meet-and-greet session with Ms. Ardant wll be held at the Institute Francais. Admission to the meeting is free.

 

Panorama.doc Program offers a screening of The Next Guardian shot in Bhutan and The Work by Jairus McLeary.

“Panorama is concerned with the subject of the film. Each one can be defined as a social event. That does not mean that we do not take the artistic quality of the film (which is inseparable from the theme) into account. But in these cases, the topic and the location are the main key to what is happening … This is true for The Next Guardian about the Bhutan teenager, who has to become a spiritual teacher in the monastery, but he is not ready for this task. This is true for The Work which depicts a social therapeutic project in an American prison,” Alexei Medvedev, Curator of the Program.

 

During Observing the Observer Program’s 3rd show, Mike Hoolboom will introduce 2 of his films. On the same day, he will give an open lecture at the St. Petersburg State Institute of Film and Television.

«Meeting Mike Hoolboom — through films, criticism or curator projects — is a clash with a sensitive, confused and deeply humanistic reflection on body, memory, perception and experiences of human interaction. Hoolboom is a Canadian icon of film avant-garde. He has been working in visual arts for over thirty years, and during that time has developed a whole artistic identity; his creative, intellectual, pedagogical and research practices are superimposed on each other and intertwined with the circumstances and experiences of his own life» – Maria Shcherbakova, film critic.

 

Evening in Memory of Aleksandr Rastoguev will take place at SPbGIK. Pavel Kostomarov and Susanna Baranzhieva will present their film I Love You.

 

Ksenia Sobchak will present a film about her father, the first mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak. Special screening of The Case will be held in Velikan Park at 17:45.

 

Resistance: 1968-2018 special program features In the Intense Now by João Moreira Salles. «The interesting thing about this films is that it is not dedicated a single event, but gives a whole cross-section of political movements in France, the Czech Republic, Brazil and China — the latter was the place of residence of the director’s mother at the peak of the Cultural Revolution. Salles investigates these events not only in the context of the big history, but also in the context of the history of those who directly took part in those events. Trying to reveal the logic of escalation and the decline of protest, he investigates what the protest meant for the generation on the scale of several countries and movements,” Katerina Beloglazova, co-curator of the program.

Moreover, right after the screening of Calendar in Poryadok Slov bookstore, a meet-and-greet session with Mark Cousins, member of the international jury, will be held. Cousins will introduce his film What is This Film Called Love? The special screening program of the Festival will also offer The Case by Vera Krichevskaya, Into_nation of Big Odessa introduced by Alexander Brunkovskiy, the director and Susanna Alperina, the producer.

 

Aleksandr Burov, the cameraman, will give an Open Lecture at the St. Petersburg School of New Cinema.

You can find the complete schedule on our website.