{"id":36391,"date":"2025-10-08T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T21:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/message2man.com\/en\/?p=36391"},"modified":"2025-10-12T23:39:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T20:39:28","slug":"2025-sky-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/message2man.com\/en\/2025-sky-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"Curators speak about the project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Curators<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of the key events of the 35th Message to Man International Film Festival is the Sky Cinema project. It is a fabric dome where films are projected \u201cinto the sky\u201d\u2014onto the tent\u2019s ceiling\u2014while the audience watches lying down. At the heart of the project is the age-old kinship between cinema and dreams.<\/p>\n

Sky Cinema was conceived and built by the St. Petersburg architectural bureau KATARSIS ab (Peter Sovetnikov and Vera Stepanskaya), with the film programme curated by Alexander Zubkovsky. The project is a collaboration between Message to Man, the Levashovsky Bread Factory Cultural Centre, and Cycle Film Lab, with support from RBI.<\/p>\n

Curators speak about the project:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

KATARSIS ab<\/a>, project creators:<\/b><\/p>\n

The idea of Sky Cinema is deeply personal for us. It was our first successful competitive project, the starting point of our creative journey. We are thrilled to see it finally come to life\u2014and could hardly imagine a better place or occasion for this. Message to Man is a legendary independent film festival, and the Levashovsky Bread Factory is a wonderful, welcoming cultural venue. The cylindrical volume of the former boiler room, reminiscent of the Roman Pantheon, is the perfect vessel for our cinema. In a way, it feels like destiny.<\/p>\n

We have always seen parallels between filmmaking and architecture. The key difference is that cinema is intangible. Its very ephemerality makes it pure magic, akin to a dream. Architecture is rooted in the earth, yet it too sometimes longs to escape gravity, to transcend walls and ceilings and become air.<\/p>\n

Our cinema is a kind of canopy enveloping the viewer. Images unfold high above, under the dome, and the act of watching becomes a collective dream.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alexander Zubkovsky, film programme curator<\/b><\/p>\n

Sky Cinema is a unique experience: a construction of floating fabric and a horizontally suspended screen beneath the roof of a large tent; a performative installation merging architecture with cinematic experiment. Audiences will encounter vast cosmic landscapes from Takashi Makino\u2019s films, the oneiric and shadowed worlds of Scott Barley, the otherworldly shores and vanished cities of Ben Rivers.<\/p>\n

The programme itself is arranged in circles. The first: retrospectives of three leading figures of experimental cinema (Rivers<\/a>, Barley<\/a>, and Makino<\/a>). The second: new features and mid-length films<\/a> selected specifically for this \u201cskyward\u201d viewing experience. Among them: an essay film exploring the language of animals and birds (Intersections<\/i><\/a>); a portrait of American neurobiologist working on consciousness expansion (John Lilly\u2026<\/i><\/a>); a monumental three-hour meditation on drifting through Paris neighborhoods (Obscure Night \u2013 \u201cAin\u2019t I a Child?\u201d<\/i><\/a>); and Monad<\/i><\/a>, a film re-edited by its author for every screening. Each of these works explores visual and sonic media and seeks to reshape our notion of what cinema can be.<\/p>\n

The next circle consists of two short-film sections: Vibrant Matter<\/a>, dedicated entirely to contemporary analogue avant-garde; and Landscapes of Memory<\/a>, films that weave together those two concepts. Finally, a separate section of Sky Cinema will host the premieres of three new works by the independent Moscow studio Mal de Mer Films<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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