Special Programmes and Screenings

Date of publication: 28 August 2019

Announcing special programmes of the 29th Message to Man Film Festival. Viewers can attend seven special programmes, two retrospectives and six special screenings. Museum of the History of Photography will host an exhibition of Icelandic video art. Festival programme includes free-of-charge workshops, meet-the-artist events, discussions and professional conferences.

Superreal Cinema

Curator: Andrei Plakhov (Moscow), Programme Director of the Message to Man Film Festival.

This is a programme of the best fiction films, which have made a powerful impression at the biggest global film festivals, which we have identified as contemporary cinema for which the traditional understanding of realism is no longer valid. There are genuine events and real characters at the heart of most of these films, but ultimately an effect of artistic “superreality” emerges. Any fact, document, or real object is material for interpretation, sometimes grotesque and fantastical.

The programme consists of 10 pictures, including five Russian premieres. The film Bacurau by the Brazilian directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles will be presented by the legendary German actor Udo Kier, who stars in the picture. Kier has roles in 230 films to his name, including Blood for Dracula, Lola, Lili Marleen, Suspiria, Dancer in the Dark, Melancholia, Blade, My Own Personal Idaho, Johnny Mnemonic, and Nymphomaniac. Udo Kier also appears in Václav Marhoul’s film The Painted Bird, which will also be shown as part of the programme: it will come to Petersburg immediately after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Our programme also features The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by the Brazilian Karim Aïnouz, which won the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. Several of the films here appeared in competition at Cannes: Sorry We Missed You by the outstanding British director Ken Loach, the Chinese film The Wild Goose Lake by Diao Yinan, and Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers. Ladj Ly’s Les Miserables won the jury prize at Cannes, while the German filmmaker Angela Schanelec’s psychological drama I Was at Home, But was awarded a Silver Bear at Berlin for best direction. Petersburgers will also have the chance to see the best – according to the ecumenical jury – competition film in Berlin: God Exists, Her Name is Petrunija by the Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska

Films:

Sorry We Missed You (2019), director Ken Loach, UK / France / Belgium – Saint-Petersburg premiere
Les misérables (2019), director Ladj Ly, France – Russian premiere
I Was at Home, But (2019), director Angela Schanelec, Germany / Serbia – Saint-Petersburg premiere
God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunija (2019), director Teona Strugar Mitevska, Macedonia / Belgium / France / Croatia / Slovenia – Saint-Petersburg premiere
The Wild Goose Lake (2019), director Diao Yinan, China / France – Saint-Petersburg premiere
The Painted Bird (2019), director Václav Marhoul – Russian premiere
The Whistlers (2019), director Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania / France / Germany – Russian premiere
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (2019), director Karim Ainouz, Brazil – Russian premiere
Lilian (2019), director Andreas Horvath, Austria – Saint-Petersburg premiere
The Traditore (2019), director Marco Bellocchio, Brazil / Germany / Italy / France – Russian premiere

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/jwlho5f

Panorama.doc

Curators: Alexey Medvedev and Natalia Pylaeva

Panorama.doc section traditionally offers a hand-picked selection of the most significant documentaries of the year. Although our main criterion is of esthetical nature, the whole pattern also shows us the important thematic trends of the contemporary documentary cinema.

This year, we pay special attention to films on art of cinema. A great filmmaker Agnès Varda bids us farewell with a film/master-class Varda by Agnès which premiered at Berlinale one month before the artist’s death. Helena Třeštíková traces the path of Miloš Forman from his early rebellious Czech films to his American masterpieces. A story of the smartest and angriest film critic in the world is told in What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael.

Along with stories on art and artists, we witness stories about the real world. And of course, contemporary reality is unthinkable of without netizens who spend the bigger share of their time in virtual reality (Searching Eva by Pia Hellenthal, Present. Perfect by Zhu Shengze).

The authors of Anthropocene – The Human Epoch (Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier) offer a more global understanding of modernity: they declare that humans started not only a new historical, but also a new geological epoch that changes the face of the Earth.

And of course we can’t do without the two masterpieces of auteur filmmaking which already belong to the history of film. What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? by Roberto Minervini and Heimat is a Place in Time by Thomas Heise show us how powerful is a camera in the hands of a talented filmmaker. It can penetrate the most secret places in space and time.

Films:

Heimat is a Space in Time, director Thomas Heise, 218’, 2019 – Saint-Petersburg premiere
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael Rob Garver, director Rob Garver, 95’, 2019
Present.Perfect, director Shengze Zhu, 124’, 2019
Anthropocene – The Human Epoch, directors Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky, 87’, 2018
Forman vs Forman, directors Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna, 78’, 2019
Searching Eva Pia Hellenthal, director Pia Hellenthal, 84’, 2019
Varda by Agnes, director Agnes Varda, 115’, 2019
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, director Roberto Minervini, 123’, 2018

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/Kwlhjv2

Nordic Avant-Garde. Moving Images From the North

Curator: Martin Grennberger, (Stockholm, Sweden)

This five-part programme includes both classical and contemporary works by filmmakers and video artists from Northern Europe. Video and 16 mm film screenings will take place at Aurora Cinema on September 15-19, film directors will attend. Curator Martin Grennberger presents the programme.

It is supported by Nordic Weeks in St Petersburg and Nordic Council of Ministers, which in 2019 is chaired by Iceland. Programme Partners: Embassy of Iceland in Moscow, Consulate General of Finland in St Petersburg, Danish Cultural Institute, The Finnish Institute in St Petersburg, Consulate General of Sweden in St Petersburg, Committee for External Relations of St Petersburg, etc.

The programme includes an exhibition by Icelandic video artists Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, Steina Vasulka and Sigurður Guðjónsson. The exhibition will take place on September 15-20 at Museum of the History of Photography.

Programme guests: film directors Inger Lise Hansen (Norway), Tinne Zenner (Denmark), Mika Taanila (Finland), Thorbjorg Jonsdottir (Iceland), Sami van Ingen (Finland).

Films:

All My Life, director Bruce Baillie, 16 mm, 3’, USA
Termination, director Bruce Baillie, 16 mm, 5’, USA
Time Like Water, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, DCP, 7’, Iceland
A Tree is Like a Man, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, DCP, 30’, Iceland / Colombia
Buffalo, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, 16 mm, 2’, Iceland / USA
Ocean Ocean, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, 16 mm, 14’, Iceland
Gudrun, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, 16 mm, 4’, Iceland
Oskar afi, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, 16 mm, 3’, Iceland
Park St, director Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, 16 mm, 4’, USA
End of the Summer, director Johan Johannsson, DCP, 29’, Iceland
Hus, director Inger Lise Hansen, 16 mm, 8’, Norway
Static, director Inger Lise Hansen, 16 mm, 6’, Norway
Tåke, director Inger Lise Hansen, DCP, 15’, Norway
Adrift, director Inger Lise Hansen, DCP, 9’, Norway
Travelling Fields, director Inger Lise Hansen, DCP, 9’, Norway
Sleeping District, director Tinne Zenner, 16 мм, 12’, Denmark
Nutsigassat, director Tinne Zenner, DCP, 21’, Denmark
Arrabida, director Tinne Zenner, 16 mm, 16’, Denmark
Porosite, director Tinne Zenner, 16 mm, 1’, Denmark
Cine-Scope, director Alexander Gutke, DCP, 5’, Sweden
Keep Shooting, director Olle Hedman, DCP, 1’, Sweden
Film № 9, directors Olle Hedman & Nina Jouchims, DCP, 1’, Sweden
Spindrift, directors Jan Bark, Erkki Kurenniemi, DCP, 15’, Finland
Study in Optical Rhythm, director Björn Lüning, DCP, 6’, Sweden
Man and Science, director Mika Taanila, DCP, 6’, Finland
Branches, director Mika Taanila, DCP, 6’, Finland
Temperature Rising, director Christine Ödlund, DCP, 5’, Sweden
Reconstruction, director Lina Selander, DCP, 5’, Sweden
Is This the World of Teddy?, director Eino Ruutsalo, DCP, 10’, Finland
Kinetic Pictures, director Eino Ruutsalo, DCP, 5’, Finland
Two Chickens, director Eino Ruutsalo, DCP, 4’, Finland
Herning 1965, director Jens Jørgen Thorsen, DCP, 10’, Denmark
“-..-“, director Seppo Renvall, DCP, 6’, Finland
Circle of the Day, director Seppo Renvall, DCP, 3’, Finland
The Price of Our Liberty, director Seppo Renvall, DCP, 9’, Finland
Globe – Encyclopedia, director Seppo Renvall, DCP, 7’, Finland
Moving Emu, director Sami van Ingen, DCP, 3’, Finland
Hammu, director Sami van Ingen, DCP, 10’, Finland
Pins, director Sami van Ingen, DCP, 10’, Finland
Finnmunka, director Sami van Ingen, DCP, 12’, Finland
I like this silence, director Mika Taanila, DCP, 2’, Finland
A Summer Trip, director Mika Taanila, DCP, 3’, Finland
My Family, director Alli Savolainen, DCP, 4’, Finland
Tests nros 5 & 6, director Marjatta Oja, DCP, 3’, Finland
Tests nros 7 & 8, director Marjatta Oja, DCP, 3’, Finland
The Zone of Total Eclipse, director Mika Taanila, 16 мм, 6’, Finland
Kirsa Nicholina, director Gunvor Nelson, 16 mm, 16’, Sweden
Five Artists: BillBobBillBillBob, director Gunvor Nelson, 16 mm, 70’, Sweden

Exhibition Recollections of Landscape: The Habitable and the Beyond

Together with Nordic Weeks Festival.

Museum of the History of Photography (Professor Popov st., 23)
September 15-20, from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Recollections of Landscape: The Habitable and the Beyond
Admission free

On September 15-20, Museum of the History of Photography will host an exhibition of Icelandic video art Recollections of Landscape: The Habitable and the Beyond. Exhibition presents works by Icelandic video artists Thorbjorg Jonsdottir, Steina Vasulka and Sigurður Guðjónsson. Admission free.

Opening ceremony of the exhibition will take place on September 15 at 3 p.m. Exhibition will be opened by the artist Thorbjorg Jonsdottir and Martin Grennberger, the curator of Nordic Avant-Garde. Moving Images from the North programme at the Film Festival. Exhibition is open on September 15-20 from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Admission free.

Video art exhibition Recollections of Landscape: The Habitable and the Beyond is supported by Nordic Weeks in St Petersburg and Nordic Council of Ministers, which in 2019 is chaired by Iceland. Programme Partners: Embassy of Iceland in Moscow, Consulate General of Finland in St Petersburg, Danish Cultural Institute, The Finnish Institute in St Petersburg, Consulate General of Sweden in St Petersburg, Committee for External Relations of St Petersburg, etc.

Martin Grennberger, curator:

This exhibition together with the five-series film programme presents films and video art from Nordic Countries, and as a relative and controversial starting point it looks at landscapes, their topographic representation and personal interpretations through the lens of four Icelandic artists with quite a diverse artistic background: among them are an experimental filmmaker, an artist, a pioneer of international video art and even a composer turned film director. The goal of the exhibition is to create a dense textured and multi-layered image with flexible points of attraction and links between separate works.

Thorbjorg Jonsdottir’s Þjórsá (2019) created in collaboration with Borghildur Oskarsdottir shows the longest glacial stream in Iceland, shot from above. This large-scale installation is shown together with two other recent works of Jonsdottir filmed in the jungle of Colombia: I Feel Myself Turn into a Serpent (2019) and A Tree is Like a Man (2019). The latter is presented as a series of separate screenshots.

Steina Vasulka’s video triptych Lava and Moss (Hraun og Mosi) (2000) shows fields of lava near Hafnarfjörður harbour. Steina is a pioneer of video art who often collaborates with her partner Woody Vasulka and whose works looked into possibilities of video since late 1960s. This is what Steina says about Lava and Moss: “It is a great challenge to get landscape, frozen for centuries to move, yes dance. If god is everywhere, his presence certainly is most tangible in lava and moss.” Vasulka’s work shows her enthusiastic, based on micro tones and touchingly “short-sighted” attitude towards the subject. Sigurður Guðjónsson’s Veil (2012) originated from author’s interest in extending the period of time when shifts and micro movements after a certain time acquire an almost hallucinogenic quality: what happens to our perception when we immerse ourselves in a close observation of send erosion?

Lava and Moss (Hraun og Mosi), 2000

Author: Steina Vasulka

“Einar Mar invited me out to his house Light Crag on a beautiful day last autumn. The reason was to offer me a show in his own gallery, set on a breathtakingly beautiful lava field in Hafnarfjordur. “The theme is lava,” he told me. “Can you make your work fit into this?” I’ve had a love affair with lava since my early childhood, when elves and trolls were still a part of my reality. I remember that if I stared long enough at a lava field, it would start to move, even to emit sounds. Many years later I took some potent mescaline in Herdisarvik, and was able to summon up those childhood memories once again, along with all of the impressions that accompanied them. It’s a great challenge; to move the landscape that has been frozen and solid for many centuries; to get the landscape dancing. If there is God everywhere, his presence is definitely most obvious when you look at lava and moss.” Steina, May 2000

Þjórsá, Iceland 2019

Authors: Thorbjorg Jonsdottir and Borghildur Oskarsdottir

Þjórsá is a 60-minute single-channel video that consists of one continuous aerial shot taken from a Cessna airplane along the river Þjórsá. The camera follows the glacial river from its estuary at the Atlantic Ocean to its headwaters at the Hofsjokull glacier. The longest river in Iceland, the Þjórsá is 230 km long. Its channel runs through varied landscapes, from the glacier in the highlands, through lava fields and down to the meadowlands, where it eventually joins the ocean at its mouth. Over the past decades, five hydro-electric dams have been built on the Þjórsá, and at least two more are planned in the coming year, which has angered the locals who live in the area of the proposed dams and conservationists alike.

I Feel Myself Turn into a Serpent, Iceland / Colombia 2019

Author: Thorbjorg Jonsdottir

I feel my face change into a serpent. My jaws become unhinged and my mouth opens up wide, wider than I really can open it. I feel my nostrils and my whole face get flat. I hiss and vomit through this wide open snake mouth and then become myself again.

Veil, 2012

Author: Sigurður Guðjónsson

Veil is a film shot in one single take on the windy, black sands of Skeiðarársandur in Iceland. The invisible wind creates a veil of sand grains covering the earth. The soothing movement and sound create a meditative experience, creating mental space for the audience to alternately focus on and zone out of their own consciousness.
sigurdurgudjonsson.net

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/Kwlhx02

The Screen touches back

Curator: Alena Koroleva (St. Petersburg)

The programme presents a collection of documentary/experimental films made in the past 10 years that look at possibilities of film to convey tactile sensations. The films focus on material properties of film and video, on touches and skin memory, an illusion of physical presence and stories told through bodies of their creators.

Films:

Meteors, director Gürcan Keltek, Turkey / The Netherlands, 81’.
Speechless, director Salomé Jashi, Georgia, 12’.
O, Persecuted, director Basma Alsharif, 12’.
I Touched Her Legs, director Eva Marie Rodbro, Denmark, 15’.
Thy Kingdom Come, director Eugene Richards , 40’.
Animal Cinema, director Emilio Vavarella,США, 12’.
Instructions on How to Make a Film, director Nazlı Dinçel, USA, 13’.
Glamorous Boys of Tang, director Su Hui Yu, Taiwan, 15’.
Interbeing, director Martina Hoogland Ivanow, Sweden, 11’.
St. Bathans Repetitions, director Alexandre Larose, Canada / New Zeland, 20’.
The Thread, directors Pablo Polanco, Pietro Bulgarelli, Chile / Costa Rica, 6’.
In Touch, director Pawel Ziemilski, Poland, 60’.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/CwlhHol

The Collapse of Socialism: 30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Programme curators: Alexei Artamonov (Saint-Petersburg), Katerina Beloglazova (Moscow).

The central link in the chain reaction of the collapse of the global system of socialism, preceding the dissolution of the USSR, was the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany: the symbolic culmination of the political history of the second half of the 20th century. This programme, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of this event, aims at examining the contradictions and causes that led to the defeat of the socialist regimes at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s, as well as the ambiguous consequences of their ruin. The crisis of the planned economy and the transition to a free market, de-Sovietisation and the establishment of a new ideology, the rise of nationalism and nostalgia for the “Third Way” – these are the subjects of the selected films, which describe the aforementioned processes both from within and from a historical distance.

At the heart of the programme are three films connected with the political transition in East Germany. Material is a three-hour essay consisting of personal material by filmmaker Thomas Heise, who documented the events and social discussions of the autumn of 1989, which he will talk about in person before the screenings in Petersburg. Petra Tschörtner‘s film Berlin–Prenzlauer Berg, shot in the traditions of cinéma vérité, gives a voice to the residents of the border zone in East Berlin – factory and shop workers, misfits and bohemian society – in a period of freedom and uncertainty: in the course of a month before the introduction of a single, western, Deutschmark. German socialism acquires the ambivalence of great hope and total defeat in Andreas Goldstein‘s film The Communist, in which the history of the country is revealed through a personal dimension: the biography of the director’s father, who was minister of culture in the GDR.

Part of the programme is devoted to the problems of representing ideology and developing a relationship to historical memory. Andrei Ujică’s The Autobiography of Nicolai Ceausescu, which uses exclusively official news footage, shows how the political language of socialist Romania changed in tune with the rise and fall of its executed leader. The Russian context is reflected by Dina Karaman’s A Chronicle of the Day, assembled using shots from Soviet newsreels from the early 1950s to 1991, and Disgraced Monuments by Laura Mulvey and Mark Lewis, which focuses on the fate of historical monuments in a post-revolutionary situation. Chris Marker’s The Balkan Trilogy covers the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the entry of the newly independent states into a new political structure – the European Union. And the situation in Latin America is analysed by the British essayist and activist Marc Karlin in Scenes for a Revolution, in which he tries to understand the reasons for the defeat of Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front in elections in 1990, despite the ideological support of the population.

Special events organised as part of the programme include an academic conference dedicated to the political and cultural aspects of the collapse of socialism which will take place in the European University at Saint Petersburg on the 21st of September, and the Petersburg premiere of artist and director Oleg Mavromatti’s latest film Semiconductor in the Poryadok Slov bookshop on the 22nd of September.

Programme guest – Thomas Heise (Germany)

Films:

Scenes for a Revolution (1991), director Marc Karlin, UK, 110’.
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (2010), director Andrei Ujică, Romania, 187’.
The communist (2019), director Andreas Goldstein, Germany, 71’.
Berlin Prenzlauer Berg (1991), director Petra Tschörtner, Germany, 75’.
Material (2009), director Thomas Heise, Germany, 166’.
Le 20 heures dans les camps (Prime time in the Camps, 1993), director Chris Marker, France, 27’.
Casque bleu (Blue Helmet, 1995), director Chris Marker, France, 26’.
Un maire au Kosovo (Mayor In Kosovo, 2000), director Chris Marker, France, 28’.

* Chris Marker’s films will be screened in French with Russian subtitles (without English translation)

A Chronicle of the day (2019), director Dina Karaman, Russia, 62’.
Disgraced Monuments (1994), directors Laura Mulvey, Mark Lewis, USA, 49’.
Semiconductor (2018), director Oleg Mavromatti,, 93’.

Academic Conference The Collapse of Socialism. A Contradictory Heritage

September 21, European University in St. Petersburg
Room 430 (White Hall)
2.30 p.m. – 8 p.m.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/ewlhNao

Exhibition Dedicated to Jonas Mekas

Jonas Mekas was an American-Lithuanian poet, director and film critic who is referred to as the godfather of American avant-garde film and the originator of the diary film genre, founder and head of the world’s largest repository of experimental film Anthology Film Archives. He was a friend and associate of Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, John Lennon and other key figures of the culture of the second half of the 20th century, many of whom he captured in his films.

Freud Museum of Dreams
Bolshoy prospect Petrogradskaya side, 18A
Exhibition opening hours:

September 14, 15, 17 and 21 – from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

September 16, 18, 19 and 20 – from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR, Jonas Mekas, 2009, 286 min

This film is made up of footage that Mekas took with his handheld Sony camera of television newscasts during the collapse of the USSR, with the noises of home in the background. It is a time-capsule record of what happened and how it happened during that crucial period as recorded by the television newscasters. It can be also viewed as a classic Greek drama in which the destinies of nations are changed drastically by the unbending, bordering on irrational, will of a single man (Vytautas Landsbergis) and one small nation determined to regain its freedom, backed by Olympus in its fight against might and power, against the impossible.

Film will be screened inEnglish without Russian translation.

Oral history interview with Jonas Mekas, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USA, 2018, 385 min

In this six-hour interview, which Jonas Mekas, born in a small Lithuanian village in 1922, gave shortly before his death in January 2019, he talks about life before he arrived in New York in 1949. He discusses his childhood and teenage years in Soviet-occupied Lithuania; distributing underground anti-Soviet publications; the German occupation of Lithuania and his participation in anti-Hitler underground activities, his flight from Lithuania with his younger brother Adolfas; their subsequent arrest and imprisonment in a labour camp in Germany; their escape from the camp; spending four years in a displaced persons camp; and finally their emigration to the United States.

Film will be screened inEnglish without Russian translation.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/9wlkDX2

Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography: 100 Years

The first educational institution in the world in the field of cinema, the Gerasimov All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2019. This is a significant event both for Russian cinema culture and for the world film industry as a whole. Indeed, the graduates of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography include not only leading Russian filmmakers such as Vadim Abdrashitov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Stanislav Govorukhin, Andrei Konchalovsky, Nikita Mikhalkov, Alexander Sokurov, Vladimir Solovyev, Andrei Tarkovsky, Marlen Khutsiev, Vladimir Shukshin, and many others, but also filmmakers outside of Russia, such as Valeri Akhadov, Angel Wagenstein, Konrad Wolf, Jerzy Hoffman, Rustam Ibragimbekov, Malik Kayumov, Márta Mészáros, Tamás Tóth, and others.

In accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 551 from November 11th, 2017, “On the Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Gerasimov All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography,” from 2018 to 2019, there have been celebratory events in Russia and abroad: dozens of master classes, concerts, performances, art exhibitions, opportunities to meet artists, and film screenings in Russian cities and countries in the former Soviet space (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan), as well as other European countries (Italy, Romania, Serbia, France, and others).

As a part of the 29th Message to Man International Festival of Documentary, Short Narrative, and Animated Films, the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography presents a special program in honor of the 100th anniversary of the institute, which includes thesis and course work by maestros of Russian cinema, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Andrei Konchalovsky, Nikita Mikhalkov, and Karen Shakhnazarov, as well as thesis films by recent graduates.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/4wljQzE

The Golden Unicorn International Film Festival

A retrospective of nominees and winners of the international award The Golden Unicorn (UK) in the category of the best foreign film with a Russia-related theme.

“The fact that our international award The Golden Unicorn competition received so many applications indicates a great interest towards Russia, its history and culture, its people and the beauty of its nature. We even had to divide the Best film about Russia award into two: for feature and documentary films. We are glad to have a very good and diverse programme that will help Russian viewers to learn how their country is perceived outside, we are glad that our film week in Britain and the festival in Russia contribute to mutual understanding between nations and their rapprochement,” says Filip Perkon, founder and general producer of the Golden Unicorn Awards and Russian Film Week.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/pwlkJNw

Retrospective of Kazuo Hara, a Japanese documentary filmmaker

Curator: Natalia Pylaeva

Kazuo Hara is a classic of Japanese documentary filmmaking, whose work is still relevant and topical even today. Cinematheques and film festivals around the world from Hong Kong to New York screen his films. As a director and screenwriter, he explores the psychology of extreme situations and social crises. The world-famous photographer Susan Sontag included Hara’s film The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On in the list of 12 most influential documentaries of our time.

The retrospective includes three of Kazuo Hara’s most celebrated films that most clearly reflect the director’s style and vision. The début Goodbye, CP (1972) is about an activist fighting the prejudices surrounding patients with cerebral palsy. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974) is an auto-documentary masterpiece. The story centres on Hara himself at the moment when his wife leaves him and invites him to film her new life and new love. And the most award-winning and famous film The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On exposing cannibalism in the Japanese army at the end of World War II. His films deal with acute social issues and at the same time are extremely attentive to the personal. He chooses uncomfortable, unpleasant material. His style, which is far from objective, can be called uncompromising, tough and somewhat wild, like the characters of his films. Hara’s documentary films have an unprecedented level of frankness for its time: in front of his camera, a child can be born into the world, and one character can beat another one half to death. Perhaps this level of frankness and candidness is the maximum that no one have managed to repeat. Hara managed to combine the skill of an observing director with passion, and therefore will remain in the history of cinema.

The director will be present at the screenings during the 29th Message to Man Film Festival.

Films:

Goodbye CP, director Kazuo Hara , 82’, Japan
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, director Kazuo Hara, 98’, Japan
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, director Kazuo Hara, 122’, Japan

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/nwlkC6U

Chantal Akerman, a Retrospective

Curator: Andrei Kartashov

Chantal Akerman (1950—2015) was born in Belgium and worked mostly in New York and Paris; her primary influences were the French New Wave and American avant-garde cinema. Akerman started making films as early as late 1960s but it wasn’t until the 2000s and especially the 2010s that her work received recognition and was included into the art film canon. Her film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, released when Akerman was just 25, is now a staple in film schools’ curricula all over the world.

Akerman’s films eschew labels and definitions, including national attribution: she remained a nomadic filmmaker throughout her life, her films being made in the US, France, Belgium, Mexico, Israel, Germany, Cambodia, Russia. This feeling of homelessness determines Akerman’s aesthetics, from the short Blow Up My Town and her first feature Je Tu Il Elle (in which the 24-year-old Akerman daringly gets in front of the camera) to the farewell documentary No Home Movie, dedicated to the director’s relationship with her dying mother.

The idea of “home” is contemplated at almost every film of the retrospective: Jeanne Dielman, in which the titular hero has grown so much into her apartment that its postal address has stuck to her name; Anna’s Meetings, in which a globetrotting director travels across Europe, from one hotel room to another; No Home Movie, a laconic experimental film on the experience of emigration. Even D’Est (From the East), an almost wordless travelogue set in the 1990s Russia.

Films:

No Home Movie, 2015, France, Belgium, 115’.
I, You, He, She, 1974, Belgium, France, 86’.
Blow Up My Town, 1968, Belgium, 13’.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, 1975, France, Belgium, 201’.
News from Home, 1976, France, Belgium, FRG, 85’.
From the East, 1993, Belgium, France, Portugal, 107’.
Anna’s Meetings, 1978, France, Belgium, FRG, 120’.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/dwlkNkb

Special Screenings

St Petersburg première of Vladimir Khotinenko’s The Lenin Factor will take place during the Festival. The film will be presented by the director.

World War I lasts for almost three years. Vladimir Lenin spends a long time as an immigrant. Having dedicated his life to preparing for revolution, he “dropped the ball” on its beginning and is now searching for any means to get back to Russia. His options are few, and finally only the most improbable remains: crossing the territory of Germany, which is at war with Russia, by train… This is where Parvus, a famous political risk taker, comes into the picture. Parvus and Lenin have a secret meeting. Parvus tells him that he has convinced the Germans to sponsor a revolution and that he can organize that very “train of fate” that will carry Lenin and his associates to Russia.

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, director Pirjo Honkasalo, member of the International Competition jury.

Pirjo Honkasalo’s documentary The 3 Rooms of Melancholia depicts the vulnerability of a child’s mind. The main characters of the film are the 9 to 14-year-old boys at Kronstadt Cadet Academy, a woman called Hadizhat Gataeva who saves children from the ruins of Chechnya, and the children living across the border in the Ingushetia refugee camp. The setting is the everlasting Chechen war.

Izabela Plucińska (Germany), animation director and member of the International Competition jury, will present a retrospective of her animation shorts.

Marathon

Germany 2008, 5 min. Directors & Animators: Izabela Plucińska, Špela Čadež

Many ordinary but different people taking part on a marathon in a small town. Abruptly it becomes foggy and the mist is getting more and more dense. The people losing their orientation. Because they cannot stop their running, they disappear in the milky fog.

Esterhazy

Germany / Poland, 2009, 25 min. Director & Cinematographer: Izabela Plucińska

The hero is a young, purblind and sawn-off bunny Esterhazy from the Esterhazy-Dynasty in Vienna. He is sent to Berlin by the Patriarch Count Esterhazy, to find a huge, healthy and beefy bunny woman near by some mysterious Berlin Wall. After a long, extensive search he finds his paradise (bunnies’ paradise that existed in the reality in between the East and West part of the famous Berlin Wall). Esterhazy will move there with the love of his life: Mimi, but as it is 1989… the Berlin Wall comes down…

7 more Minutes

Germany, 2008, 7 min. Director & Animator: Izabela Plucińska

A train accident! Four of the passengers awake at the beach. It’s sunny, warm, the sky is blue and the seagulls are screaming. Why not take a bath in the sea? …or do they drift from the here and now to the hereafter?

Evening

Germany / Poland, 2016, 3 min. Director, Animator & Editor: Izabela Plucińska

A man and a woman have obviously run out of words to say to each other – so they take action. He throws her favourite dinnerware out of the window; she smashes his hunting trophy … Furniture, clothes, walls – nothing is safe from them. In Izabela Plucińska’s plasticine animation the quarrelling couple join forces to smash the whole household to pieces. But can people who argue so passionately really just part at the end of the day?

Afternoon

Germany / Poland, 2012, 3 min. Director, Cinematographer & Editor: Izabela Plucińska

They live together but separately – held together by a thin thread. An unfortunate accident leads them to each other again.

Darling

Germany / Poland, 2013, 6 min. Director, Screenwriter & Animation: Izabela Plucińska

What is memory loss? In the labyrinth of fear, a stranger becomes a close person and home turns into a trap. Groping her way down the track of familiar objects and shapes, the character is trying to go back to the life that used to be her own. This latest clay animation from Izabela Plucińska is a captivating picture of the feeling of being lost and alienated and an attempt at putting the pieces that fail to fit together into a whole.

The Greek of the Russian Empire, the film will be presented by the director Svetlana Muzychenko and producer Maria Ksinopulo.

A biopic about Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776-1831), a brilliant diplomat and Greece’s first president. As an important international figure, he was able to determine the future development of Europe by predicting the modern model of the European Union.

Kapodistrias’ personal life combined all the elements of the Greek tragedy: love and betrayal, truth and lies, intrigue and honour – and his murder remains an unhealed wound for all Greeks.

Director Ivan Tverdovsky-Sr will present his new documentary Valentina Tokarskaya’s Theatre: The Story of One Fascinating Destiny

She was born to be an actress. And this is not just a case of unqualified artistic talent: fate wrote her life as a drama – a play with elements of adventure, romance and historic tragedy.

Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words

Participants of the Festival’s professional session organised by the Association of independent filmmakers Baltic 2 Black Sea (Sweden) can attend the screening of Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (admission for accredited participants of the Festival only).

A captivating look behind the scenes at the remarkable life of a young Swedish girl who became one of the most celebrated actresses in American and world cinema.

Released in Sweden in 2015, the film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and was also selected for screening at the Jerusalem Film Festival the same year. The film had its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival. More than 300,000 viewers came to watch the movie in Swedish cinemas.

Before the screening there will be an introduction about the film as one of the most successful cases in the theatrical distribution of documentaries in Sweden.

The film will be screened with English and Russian subtitles.

You can download additional information about programmes, reportage photos and screenshots at: https://cutt.ly/dwlk2BJ

Swedish Industry Programme. B2B DOC at M2M 2019

B2B DOC is an informal co-production platform for filmmakers living and working between the Baltic Sea in the North and the Black Sea in the South. B2B DOC is the place where filmmakers – from inexperienced ones to established film directors and producers – meet, share their knowledge and help each other to bring their documentary stories to the international market together, in co-production.

B2B DOC takes part in M2M to promote its platform among Russian documentary filmmakers. We want our Russian colleagues who have film ideas to join us and use our network, to find co-production partners in Europe and ultimately finance their project at the international film market.