20.10.2025 at 18:45. In Between: St. Petersburg’s Film Culture of the 1990s: Airplane | Phantoms of White Nights | Above the Lake | Zhuk-1 | Emptiness | The Aftertaste | Neo-Academicism Manifesto | Group Portrait of Loneliness | The End of St. Petersburg, or New Icarus, Dom Kino, Blue Hall

Time and place

Monday, 20 October 2025 at 18:45

Dom Kino Cinema Center – Blue Hall: Karavannaya Street, 12

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Description

Airplane

1990, USSR, 3 min., col., no dialogue, feature, short-length
Director: Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Phantoms of White Nights

1991, USSR, 7 min., feature, short-length
Director: Dmitry Frolov

Above the Lake

1995, Russia, 10 min., b/w, feature, short-length
Director: Dmitry Frolov

Zhuk-1

1995, Russia, 4 min., b/w, feature, short-length
Director: Dimitri Lurie

Emptiness

1996, Russia, 10 min., b/w, feature, short-length
Director: Dimitri Lurie

The Aftertaste

1999, Russia, 15 min., b/w,feature, short-length
Director: Dimitri Lurie

Neo-Academicism Manifesto

1996, Russia, 7 min., col., language – Russian, short-length
Director: Olga Tobreluts

Group Portrait of Loneliness

1993, Russia, 8 min., b/w., feature, short-length
Director: Eduard Shelganov

The End of St. Petersburg, or New Icarus

1992, Russia, 6 min., b/w., feature, short-length
Director: Eduard Shelganov

Airplane

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Year: 1990

Country: USSR

Duration: 3 min.

Description

Timur Novikov’s famous textile appliqués are vast, colorful panels with tiny central figures—primitive and almost pictogram-like. The deliberate childishness and even crudeness of these works, along with the contrast between the scale of the canvas and the imagery, are typical of postmodern irony. Here, a local variation of “arte povera” is combined with naïve symbolism, subtly evoking the origins of heraldic language. Meanwhile, video animation serves as a kind of emancipation of Novikov’s narratives, where the figures of characters transform into alienated entities.

About the director:

Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Submarine

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Year: 1990

Duration: 3 min.

Description

Timur Novikov’s famous textile appliqués are vast, colorful panels with tiny central figures—primitive and almost pictogram-like. The deliberate childishness and even crudeness of these works, along with the contrast between the scale of the canvas and the imagery, are typical of postmodern irony. Here, a local variation of “arte povera” is combined with naïve symbolism, subtly evoking the origins of heraldic language. Meanwhile, video animation serves as a kind of emancipation of Novikov’s narratives, where the figures of characters transform into alienated entities.

About the director:

Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Sunrise

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Year: 1990

Country: СССР

Duration: 3 min.

Description

Timur Novikov’s famous textile appliqués are vast, colorful panels with tiny central figures—primitive and almost pictogram-like. The deliberate childishness and even crudeness of these works, along with the contrast between the scale of the canvas and the imagery, are typical of postmodern irony. Here, a local variation of “arte povera” is combined with naïve symbolism, subtly evoking the origins of heraldic language. Meanwhile, video animation serves as a kind of emancipation of Novikov’s narratives, where the figures of characters transform into alienated entities.

About the director:

Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Penguins

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Year: 1990

Duration: 3 min.

Description

Timur Novikov’s famous textile appliqués are vast, colorful panels with tiny central figures—primitive and almost pictogram-like. The deliberate childishness and even crudeness of these works, along with the contrast between the scale of the canvas and the imagery, are typical of postmodern irony. Here, a local variation of “arte povera” is combined with naïve symbolism, subtly evoking the origins of heraldic language. Meanwhile, video animation serves as a kind of emancipation of Novikov’s narratives, where the figures of characters transform into alienated entities.

About the director:

Timur Novikov, Sergei Shutov

Phantoms of White Nights

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Dmitry Frolov

Year: 1991

Country: USSR

Duration: 7 min.

Description

Black figures, red dwarfs, idols astride bronze horses, and shadows of geniuses and heroes. This is not the tale of Hades from ancient Greek myth. This is St. Petersburg, steeped in the mystical literary tradition.

About the director:

Dmitry Frolov

The End of St. Petersburg, or New Icarus

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Eduard Shelganov

Year: 1992

Country: Russia

Duration: 6 min.

Description

The myth of Icarus intertwines with the architecture of St. Petersburg, which propels the hero skyward only to collapse with him.

About the director:

Eduard Shelganov

Group Portrait of Loneliness

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Эдуард Шелганов

Year: 1993

Country: Russia

Duration: 8 min.

Description

The characters’ longing to be immortalized on film leads to their solitude.

About the director:

Eduard Shelganov

Zhuk-1

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Dimitri Lurie

Operator: Dimitri Lurie

Editor: Dimitri Lurie

Cast: Dima Zhukov

Year: 1995

Country: Russia

Duration: 4 min.

Description

Shot from a St. Petersburg rooftop, Bond film episodes become the core of a story about a crafty secret agent, call sign Zhuk-1, who is assigned a covert mission by a young Pioneer resident spy.

About the director:

Dimitri Lurie (born in Leningrad, USSR in 1970), is an independent film-maker, producer, videoartist and photographer. Lurie is graduated from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, the Faculty of Engineering Cybernetics, and subsequently studied at the Religious-Philosophical Institute. From 1991 to 2001, he actively participated in the movement of St. Petersburg nonconformist artists, who declared (squatted) St. Petersburg’s resettlement areas as territories of art. He curated and participated in a number of international art and film projects. He began filming in 1994 with a 16mm camera “Krasnogorsk-3”. He is the author of twenty short fiction, experimental and documentary films, which have participated in many international festivals and won awards. Lurie’s works are in the collections of European film archives and museums of contemporary art. In 1999, he was invited to teach at a private film school in Oslo. In 2006, Dmitry became a scholarship holder of the Norwegian government. He lives and works in Oslo.

Above the Lake

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Dmitry Frolov

Year: 1995

Country: Russia

Duration: 10 min.

Description

An effort to enter the poetic world of Alexander Blok, capturing the atmosphere of the Silver Age of Russian poetry through the cinematic techniques of that era. A poet, afflicted by consumption, yearns to meet his muse, yet this remains beyond his reach.

About the director:

Dmitry Frolov

Neo-Academicism Manifesto

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Olga Tobreluts

Year: 1996

Country: Russia

Duration: 7 min.

Description

The film is conceived as the world’s first commercial for an artistic movement. Literary geniuses meet in the afterlife to debate contemporary art. Concluding that postmodernism has destroyed it, they proclaim a remedy—Neo-Academism!

About the director:

Olga Tobreluts

Emptiness

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Dimitri Lurie

Operator: Dimitri Lurie

Screenwriter: Dimitri Lurie

Editor: Dimitri Lurie

Cast: Eduard Shelganov

Year: 1996

Country: Russia

Duration: 10 min.

Description

A meditative film reflecting on the state of utter devastation that follows intense emotional experience. It seeks to capture a condition of “zero-being,” where, through the passage beyond despair, the chance of new creative ascent emerges.

About the director:

Dimitri Lurie (born in Leningrad, USSR in 1970), is an independent film-maker, producer, videoartist and photographer. Lurie is graduated from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, the Faculty of Engineering Cybernetics, and subsequently studied at the Religious-Philosophical Institute. From 1991 to 2001, he actively participated in the movement of St. Petersburg nonconformist artists, who declared (squatted) St. Petersburg’s resettlement areas as territories of art. He curated and participated in a number of international art and film projects. He began filming in 1994 with a 16mm camera “Krasnogorsk-3”. He is the author of twenty short fiction, experimental and documentary films, which have participated in many international festivals and won awards. Lurie’s works are in the collections of European film archives and museums of contemporary art. In 1999, he was invited to teach at a private film school in Oslo. In 2006, Dmitry became a scholarship holder of the Norwegian government. He lives and works in Oslo.

The Aftertaste

Genres: Feature, Short-length

Director: Dimitri Lurie

Operator: Roman Lugovskoy

Screenwriter: Beate Petersen, Dimitri Lurie

Cast: Beate Petersen

Year: 1999

Country: Norway, Russia

Duration: 15 min.

Description

A stranger living in the labyrinths of Petrograd cannot rid herself of the inexplicable anxiety that permeates the city’s atmosphere. Hovering on the edge of being and non-being, she tries in vain to soften its aftertaste with chocolate and music.

About the director:

Dimitri Lurie (born in Leningrad, USSR in 1970), is an independent film-maker, producer, videoartist and photographer. Lurie is graduated from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, the Faculty of Engineering Cybernetics, and subsequently studied at the Religious-Philosophical Institute. From 1991 to 2001, he actively participated in the movement of St. Petersburg nonconformist artists, who declared (squatted) St. Petersburg’s resettlement areas as territories of art. He curated and participated in a number of international art and film projects. He began filming in 1994 with a 16mm camera “Krasnogorsk-3”. He is the author of twenty short fiction, experimental and documentary films, which have participated in many international festivals and won awards. Lurie’s works are in the collections of European film archives and museums of contemporary art. In 1999, he was invited to teach at a private film school in Oslo. In 2006, Dmitry became a scholarship holder of the Norwegian government. He lives and works in Oslo.