2003 Red Shift Program
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Yuriy Gavrilenko and Slava Solganik
20 Cans of Chunky Beef Soup
2003, 30 minutes (premiere)
Yuriy Gavrilenko and Slava Solganik are independent film/video makers
living in New York City. RSF is proud to present their film "20 Cans
of Beef Chunky Soup", a documentary about Maxim Vakhmin and his shady
arrangements with life. Thought of as an angel and a devil at the same
time, he is losing successful friends and getting new ones. Once considered
a talented artist, he is now living on the streets. He mysteriously survives
numerous fatal injuries, like a fall from the window and crash of the
prison bus. But still he is enjoying his life to the fullest.
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Videolog:
Pap (Russian Aura of Pennsylvania)
Va Bach(Vagrich Bakhchanyan)
Ernst (Ernst Neizvestny)
2002, 22 minutes (premiere)
Alina and Jeff Bliumis
Alina Bliumis (Lukatsevich) and Jeff Bliumis are New York-based artists.
Using a variety of innovative techniques, they have produced videos, animations
and stills exploring visual expressions and constructing sequences in
conjunction with sound and musical performances. They have created a number
of projects ranging from sculpture and film to videos and installations.
RSF is proud to showcase their project "Videolog" is a series
of short films that provide viewers with a glance into a creative realm
inhabited by our contemporaries. Each film uses a different technique
and approach. It is a log, a videolog that depicts a facet of each subject
and is a sketch rather than a portrait.
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Vasya
2002, 60 minutes
Andrei Zagdansky
Andrei Zagdansky is an independent film/video director and a recipient
of the Rockefeller Fellowship. He had produced over a dozen films including
"Registration," "Interpretation of Dreams," "Six
days of New York," etc. RSF is proud to present his powerful documentary
called "Vasya" about the life and struggles of Vasily Sitnikov,
an infamous man among the Moscow's artistic elite of the 50s-70s. Officially
insane, a man without a passport, in and out of mental institutions of
Moscow, he created his circle of pupils and a powerful myth. A hybrid
documentary "Vasya" is blending the documentary footage with
animation, explores the myth and the artist.
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Pulp
1989, 5 minutes
Vadim Pevzner
I Am Sorry, Dave
1990, 5 minutes
Vadim Pevzner
Vadim Pevzner is a filmmaker, a musician, a poet, and a songwriter. His
filmmaking and videography reflect an engagement with all aspects of shooting,
processing images, and sound. A graduate from the School of The Art Institute
of Chicago, his films and videos have appeared in many international festivals.
Pevzner's works possess a playfulness and black humor not often found
in "experimental" film-making. He uses shocking images as a
value in itself to evoke discomfort, displeasure, and visceral involvement.
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The Spiritual Meditation of Igor Sikorsky
2002, 2.40 minutes (premiere)
Olya and Vasily Thompson
Olya and Vasily Thompson work as photographers and independent television
producers. Their Tati-esque tribute to aeronautical legend Igor Sikorsky
combines Cold War graphic design with Sikorsky's beliefs in the supernatural.
The New York-based couple recently teamed up with Britain's Channel 4
to produce Hardcorps, a documentary about American Civil War re-enactors.
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Untitled
2002, 5 minutes (US premiere)
Nataliya Lyakh
Nataliya Lyakh is a Ph.D in neuro-linguistics who now devotes all her
time to experimental video and photography. With a background in scientific
experimental research, in her videos she observes the empirical world
with the scrutinizing eye of a former scientist. Using the media of video
art, she tries to penetrate the physical releasing the imagery of the
most ordinary objects (such as windshield wipers, a flame, water, etc).
Such transformations give birth to endless associations, which defy the
very existence of the objective reality.
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The Geometrists
2002, 14 minutes (US premiere)
Michael Chernyshov
Michael Chernyshov is a New York-based artist and an independent film/video
maker whose first two-hour video project "Empire-Suprematism"
was completed in 1984. In 1993, the film was a part of Michael Chernyshov's
retrospective at Soros Foundation in Moscow. Since then, the film has
been revised and was titled "The Geometrists" when it was showcased
at the Ifa Gallery in Berlin, Germany in 2002. RSF is proud to present
a 14 minute-piece from this powerful eclectic project.
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Book About People
2003, 20 minutes (premiere)
Dmitriy Rozin
Dmitriy Rozin is a writer and a filmmaker living in New York. His film
and video work references the necrorealist cinema of the former Soviet
Union. Dmitriy's American-acquired interest in Russian post-modern filmmaking
paints an associative and nostalgic picture of people drifting in the
void between industrial and natural landscapes. The film Book About People
is his work in progress started in 1997.
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Friends My Ass
2002, 44 minutes
"Friends My Ass" is a riveting psycho-thriller documenting the
lives of seven Russian video-artists in New York. The film is well-produced
with eye-popping special effects and compelling drama of Russian tusovkas.
It profiles a corporate soldier, an eclectic dancer, a Euro-trash intellectual,
a fashion fanatic, a lip-syncing sensation, a thinker about buttons, and
a man so mysterious that even his friends wonder whether he has any women.
It ponders over such issues as friendship, sex, global terrorism, garbage
management, fashion, alcohol and nostalgia. Its honest, funny and pleasing
to the eye with luxurious places and ravishing costumes. The producers
of this film are Yuriy Gavrilenko, Slava Solganik, Andrey Koltchanov,
Igor Nourgaliev, Dmitry Povolotsky, Dmitriy Rozin, Vasily Strela.
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Tango
2001, 3 minutes
Mirek Nisenbaum
Mirek Nisenbaum is an animator whose project "Tango" received
a lot of recognition around the world. He was awarded best Animation prize
at South by Southwest Interactive in Texas, Best Sound and Music as well
as Audience Prize at FIFI in France. "Tango" was also included
in the Streaming Cinema 2.0 in Austria and presented in Lisbon and is
now a part of The National Art museum of Ireland "art online"
collection. "Tango" is a freehand animation done directly in
Flash, inspired by the work of the great Astor Piazzolla.
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Terminally Ambivalent Over You
2002, 3.5 minutes
Aleksey Budovsky
Bathtime in Celkkerwell
2002, 3.5 minutes
Aleksey Budovsky
Aleksey Budovsky is a film/video producer who graduated from Brooklyn
College with emphasis on film. Among his many projects is a music video
called "Terminally Ambivalent Over You" that he produced for
a British band "(The Real) Tuesday Weld". Currently, he is working
on another animated music video for the same group.
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Recipe for Melody
2001, 2 minutes
Alina Bliumis (Lukatsevich)
Recipe for Melody is another computer animation created by Alina Lukatsevich
that was showcased at The Tampere 32nd International Film Festival in
Finland. "Recipe for Melody" is presented in dreamlike sequences:
bird eats fish, clock eats bird, human face morphs in aquarium, shoes
dance and step into a bowl of soup. In real life it doesn't make sense,
but in a dream - everything is possible. The animation is produced in
a child-like dada style with intensive color drawings, incorporating digital
video and photo images, accompanied by original music by Taras Mashtalir.
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Radioman
1999, 15 minutes
Yura Makoveychuk
Yura Makoveychuk is an artist, animator and producer with an MFA from
The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He has worked on various productions
like "Our Christmas," "As Good as it Gets," "Godzilla,"
etc. His film "Radioman" is about Professor Runge a.k.a. Radioman
who claims that anything that was ever broadcasted on the radio exists
eternally in a parallel world of radio ether, and he has invented an apparatus
which allows him to communicate with this ethereal world. Although he
has tried to present his ideas to the scientific community, they were
repeatedly dismissed as too far-fetched.
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Angel
1995, 1.5 minutes
Martin Douboroff and Anna Frants
Anna Frants is a New York based artist and gallery owner. A graduate from
Muhina Academy of Fine Arts, she has been awarded an Autodesk Planet Studio
Award for the best computer animation. She has participated in, and curated
numerous art exhibitions in New York and St. Petersburg and has also published
articles on art. RSF is proud to present her project "Angel"
- a 3D computer-rendered cartoon inspired by a Russian joke.
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The Boatman's Call
2002, 3 minutes
Sergei Aniskov
Sergei Aniskov is an independent film/video maker and animator whose project
"The Boatman's Call" received the Best Animation Award at The
Coney Island Short Film Festival in 2002. It is a story of a longshore
boatman who discovers the joys and agonies of family life. This tale of
melancholy, love and adventure was inspired by lyrics from "Lime-Tree
Arbour," written by the Australian poet Nick Cave.