RUSSIAN
DANCE FILMS SELECTION 2004
Clown
10min, 2002, Russia
Director: Irina Evteeva
with Slava Polunin
A dance animation
about love, grief, solitude and death of a clown. The film stars
one the most famous Russian mimes Vyacheslav Polunin.
Irina
Evteeva is a masterful animator from St. Petersburg.
Her films have been screened at the numerous festivals around
the world. Evteeva's technique is ravishingly fascinating. She
eschews computers in favor of a painstaking, craftsman’s
approach, altering cinematographic images (her own and vintage)
by painting on glass frames with bold lines and upsettingly bright
colors.
God
4min, 2003, Russia
Director: Konstantin Bronzit
A humorous
animated short about Shiva's encounter with a fly. "Sometimes
the Gods can be vulnerable." - Moscow Film Festival
Konstantin
Bronzit is an internationally acclaimed animator and cartoonist.
He graduated from art school in 1983 and from the Department
of Industrial Design at the School of Art and Design in 1992.
During his studies, Konstantin also worked as an animator at
the Studio of Popular Science Films. It was at this studio where
Bronzit made his first film "The Round About" in 1988.
In 1988, Konstantin began actively drawing cartoons for magazines
and newspapers. By 1994, he had participated in numerous international
cartoon competitions winning more than twenty different awards
for his cartoons. From 1993 until 1995, Konstantin worked as
a scriptwriter, director and animator for several films for
the Moscow animation studio "PILOT". In 1994, he graduated
from higher courses in scriptwriting and directing with Fjodor
Khitruk in Moscow. Bronzit's short animated films, including
"Switchcraft", "Pacifier", "Knock Knock",
"Die Hard", and "At The Ends of the Earth"
have received more than 45 prizes and awards from festivals
throughout the world including the grand prizes at ANNECY'95
and ANNECY'98.
Zapazdavshaya
Premiera (Belated Premiere), 60 min, 2003 –
Discovery of 2003! (St. Petersburg)
Director/Producer: Victor Bocharov
The film
re-writes the history of world animation by telling a story
of Alexander SHIRIAEV (1867-1941), one of the first ballet filmmakers
who began his experiments in the 1900s (10 years before the
first animated film by Alexander Starevich came out in 1912).
Shiryaev was a distinguished character dancer of Mariinsky Theatre,
and a rehearsal director to Marius Petipa as well as the author
of the first in the world technique of teaching the character
dance. Among his cinematographic experiments are documentaries,
dance and play miniatures, drawn and puppet animations.
Alexander
Shiryaev (10.09.1867 – 25.04.1941). Son
of the ballet dancer SHIRYAEVA and a grandson of the composer
Cesar Puni, in1885 Alexander Shiryaev graduated from the St. Petersburg
Theatre School. He was a student of M.Petipa, P.Gerdt, P.Karsavin,
L.Ivanov. Since 1886, he had been the leading dancer of the Mariinsky
Theatre working under Moris Petipa. Since 1900, he had been an
aide of the Mariinsky Theatre ballet-master. Since 1903, he had
been the second ballet-master at the Mariinsky Theatre. He restored
the ballets: «Naiad and fisherman», «The Harlem
tulip», «Coppelia». In his years at the Mariinsky
Theatre, he performed in 32 ballets. Among his parts are: Milon
in “The King’s Order”, Fairy Karabos in “The
Sleeping Beauty”, Ivan-the-Fool in “The Hunchback
Horse”, Quasimodo in “Esmeralda”, Harlequin
and Cassandr in “Harlequinade”, Coppelius in “Coppelia”,
Seif-Pasha in “Corsair”, Abdurrahman in “Raymonda”,
Marceline in “La fille mal gardée”, Fool in
“Mlada”, Buffoon in “Nutcracker”, and
others. In 1905, he retired and organized a Class of Character
Dance at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1909 -1917, he worked as a
dancer and ballet-master in Germany, England, France and other
countries. He worked also as a coach in Anna Pavlova’s group.
In 1891-1909, he was a professor at the St. Petersburg Theatre
School. In 1918-1941, he was a professor at the Leningrad Choreographic
School. Among his students are:A.Monakhov, A.Orlov, B.Romanov,
F.Lopukhov, A.Chekrygin, N.Anissimova, P.Gussev, and others. He
is a co-author of the first in the world handbook “Elements
of Character Dance” (1939), an author of yet unpublished
book: “The St. Petersburg Ballet: memoirs of the Mariinsky
Theatre dancer” (1941).
Filmmaker:
Victor Bocharov
graduated from the Scriptwriting and Cinema Studies Department
of the National State Institute of Cinema in 1979. He has been
making films were over 30 years a director, editor and historian.
Among his works as a director are “Boris Eifman. Cognition”,
“…Where my whole life flows”, “Andrei
Roublev”, “Love and Honour of Karl Rossi”,
and others. He is also the Editing Director of the film-ballets:
“Giselle. Staged by Nikita Dolgushin”, “Faun’s
Afternoon”, “Hamlet”, “We must have
it!” and the author and host of 5 editions of the TV programs
“Masterpieces of the Russian Choreography”. Since
1990 he has been the Director of the Film Production Company
“Miris”.
Background:
“In 1989, I started working on the Project “Apostles
of the Russian Ballet” that were to assemble the archival
footage with famous dancers and artists of the Russian ballet.
Gradually my search started to expand and I began studying the
documents of the Emperor’s Theatres Office related to
the period from 1890 to 1918. In one of the documents dated
back from 1904, I found mentioning of the fact that the character
dancer and aide to the Ballet-Master Petipa Alexander Shiryaev
had applied to the Office asking their permission to buy a film
camera and film stock for filming the dances performed by leading
dancers of the Emperor’s stage. Shiryaev asked for money
only to cover camera and film expenses as he intended to be
a cameraman himself for free. Shiryaev’s application was
rejected. A little later in Fyodor Lopukhov’s papers,
I encountered mentioning of this story but with this addition:
Shiryaev had not abandoned his idea and nevertheless purchased
a camera in London and did the filming. I tried to find some
relatives of Shiryaev. Unfortunately, his wife, daughter, and
son had died even when he was still alive. I only managed to
find a niece of Shiryaev second wife son’s who remembered
that she had seen some films in Shiryaev’s apartment after
the World War II but she really did not remember what happened
with them. She thought that the films had been given to the
Theatre Museum. I contacted the Museum but nothing could be
found there either. At the beginning of 1995, a former ballet
dancer and subsequently a photographer of the Vaganova’s
School and Kirov’s Theatre, Daniil Saveliev called me.
He was told to do so by a fellow of the Photo Department of
the St. Petersburg Theatre Museum Mrs. Bernatas who had known
of my search for the Shiryaev’s archive. He told me that
he had the film documents I was interested in. It turned out
that in the early 1960s, a distant relative of Alexander Shiryaev
got in touch with him. When sorting through old things, she
encountered some boxes with films and first wanted to throw
them out but then she remembered Saveliev and called him. In
1995, I purchased the Shiryaev’s archive from Daniil Saveliev.”
– Victor Bocharov
EMERGING
DANCE FILM ARTISTS 2004
BALO,
15min, 2004
Directors: Alexei Dul’tsev,
Alexei Yakovlev (Ekaterinburg)
Choreographer: Martin Forsberg
Adventures
of an emerging Danish choreographer in the heart of the Urals
– in Ekaterinburg while in residence at the Modern Dance
School of Lev Shulman. Why do Russian dancers think differently
from the Europeans… Glimpses into the thinking of the
emerging modern dancers in Russia. Alexei Dul’tsev and
Alexei Yakovlev shared the jury award at the first Dance Film
Competition in St. Petersburg this year.
Bosonozhki
(BEARFEETTNIKS), 29 min, 2003
Director: Alexander Dunyaev
Producer: VGIK 2003
The film
tells the story about the Isadora Duncan School founded in 1921
in Moscow. Among the characters in the film are Elena Nikolaevna
Fedorovskaya (b. 1913) who used to study in the Duncan’s
school and the dance students of Nikolai Ogryzkov.
Golovokruzhevo
(SPINNING HEAD), 2.5min, 2004 – Finalist
Russian Dance Film Competition 2004
Director/Dancer/Producer: Vladimir
Vishnyakov (City of Chelyabinsk)
An intriguing
short that brings the dancer’s jumps into one continuous
aerial dance portrayed over the urban landscapes of the filmmaker’s
hometown Chelyabinsk (in the Urals of Russia). Valdimir Vishnyakov
studied modern dance at the Mikhail Abramov studio of Plastic
Arts at the Contemporary Drama School in Moscow. While studying,
he developed interest to animation as a device to studying movement.
Since then he has created numerous shorts combining the two
art forms.
Dykhaniye
Zemli (BREATH of EARTH),
9 min, 2004 – Finalist Russian Dance Film Competition 2004
Director: Mikhail Sankov and Natalia
Pavlova
Dancer: Natalia Pavlova
Producer: VGIK 2004
A woman
is battling with fears of the forest… This short echoes
the 60 of the Soviet Cinema era.
Mikhail Sankov is a graduate of the National Cinematography
School (VGIK) in Moscow. This is his first dance film. Natalia
Pavlova is a choreographer from Moscow.
KINODANCE
FESTIVAL MASTER CLASS SELECTION 2002, 2003
Since 2001,
St. Petersburg International Dance Film Festival KINODANCE and
Kannon Dance School (director: Vadim Kasparov) have been organizing
master-classes that allowed dancers and filmmakers from Russia,
CIS and Eastern European countries to explore dance film genre.
The selection below presents the most successful projects that
came out of these workshops (some of these projects were presented
at the festivals around the world).
Remote
Control
1min, 2003 (Russia)
Choreographer / Director: Natalia Kasparova;
Anya Ozerskaya, Dima Burakov
An alternative
way for a couple to communicate.
Koridor
1min, 2003 (Russia)
Choreographer / Director: Natalia Kasparova
and Kannon Dance Company
You never
know what you could encounter in one of those long corridors
in the post-soviet House of Culture.
Vertical
Tango
2min, 2003 (Russia)
Choreographer / Director: Julia Kryukova
and Tanya Balashova
| Geometric
shapes of stairs, windows, tango steps and their silhouettes
weave together to evoke glimpses of tango... Vertical
Tango was part of the Liquid Bodies Program at the Moving
Pictures Festival of Dance in Toronto, Canada (October
2003). |
 .
|
Verochka
6min, 2003 (Russia)
Choreographer / Director: Natalia Kasparova
and Kannon Dance Company
| |
This
vignette is an homage to all the cloack room ladies
who have been greeting theatre and concert audiences
at the Houses of Culture (i.e. large community art centers)
for decades during the Soviets. With the collapse of
the Soviet Union, the Houses of Culture together with
their cloak-rooms were turned into the offices, bowling
alleys, casinos, bars.... |
Eugenica
5min, 2002 (Poland)
Choreographer / Director: Theatre of
Open Creation and Igor Davletchin
" In
the 21st century a human being becomes capable of manufacturing
other human beings aspiring to use technologies to make a human
immortal. Are we wise enough to be able to handle all the power
that is given to us? EUGENICA
is not trying to give answers to this question but anxiously
(but not hopelessly) pondering over it." - Theatre of Open
Creation
Theatre
of Open Creation (TOK) was founded by
Beata Owczrek and Artur Dobranski in 1998. Among
TOK's choreographies are "And if happiness was here...,"
"to be continued," "Eugenica," "so
simple." The company received multiple awards from the
festivals around the world and is based in Krakow, Poland.
The TOK is currently led by Beata
Owczrek and Janusz Skubaczkowski.
Two
Trains
4min, 2002 (Estonia)
Director: Koit Ojaliiv, Esko Rip
Choreographer: Tiina Ollesk and René
Nõmmik (Fine 5)
A reflection
of images about traveling in time and space. Two individuals
as if connected via invisible emotional stirngs, migrate from
one surrounding to another.
Tiina
Ollesk and René Nõmmik developed Two
Trains into a 30-minute multimedia stage piece
that was highly awarded at the International Festival of Modern
Choreography (Vitebskas, Baltarusija / Vitebsk, Belarus) and
Pinerolo Contemporary Dance Contest (Italija / Italy) 2003.
Fine
5 Dance Theatre
was established as a collaboration of five dancers from Nordstar
Dance Theare in 1992. In 1998 the company was renamed Fine
5 Dance Theatre led by Tiina Ollesk and René Nõmmik.
Fine 5 has performed in USA, Sweden, Finland and Baltic States.
©
Kinodance–Russia, 2005
akovgan@kinodance.com
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