January Blues: Music

Composer Alexander Knaifel’s work A Silly Horse consists of 15 stories for a singer and piano. Each story has its title, and these titles were used to find newsreel clips from the 20th century, which have nothing in common except that they are archive material. The music and the image magically combine to create the story of a boy who hears and sees only the words “Why dreams”, which gave this film its name.

Two beautiful girls, a lake, trees, and an elderly gentleman casually fishing. What happens if the girls go mermaid? Sergei Solovyov himself plays the man too old to care for the strange ideas of some gorgeous nymphs. A cinematic bagatelle by a director whose art and heart was always with the young.

Russia has a surfeit of overqualified graduates. Nastya Sokolova is one of them. Her career, if you can call it that, gave her a plethora of unexpected work experiences: from desk slave in banking to head bookkeeper of an illegal brothel. The film’s eight tableaus detail the various workplaces, colleagues and situations. To finish it off: deadpan commentary.

The film details the early years of the legendary Siberian Punk/Rock group 'Гражданская Оборона' (Grazhdanskaya Oborona), and its frontman, Egor Letov.

Tinnitus is the hearing of sound when no external sound is present. While often described as ringing, it may also sound like a clicking, hiss or roaring. The film is supposed to be the first one dedicated to music as an instrument for death exploration.

Based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's In a Grove, story takes place during the times of Tsar Alexander II. A lady-in-waiting tells the Emperor in his bedroom a metaphysical story about a 13th century prince who is killed in the woods under mysterious circumstances. Fairy tale characters who have witnessed the terrible death, all share their version of the events, gradually shedding light on what really happened.

The group studies and performs karachay-balkarian folklore. Gollu is a traditional dance for vernal equinox. The band's name is a metaphor because just like spring is the time for revival, Gollu revive, reinterpret and develop traditional culture of their nation. The connecting thread of this film is legend about debate of person and devil. Fragments of the legend are followed by live performances and footages from archive shooting and all of that create a difficult metaphorical drama about journey from darkness to the light.

A modern fairy tale with scientists, partisans, cosmonauts, officials, and the Motherland. The scientist and his assistant are collecting the ingredients for an elixir that can resurrect dead people to life. At the same time, officials are looking for the carpenter who has a power to transmute water into oil.

In the small town of Kansk, the Krasnoyarsk Territory many years in a row there is an international festival of short experimental films, which has a strong reputation throughout the world. "Russia as a dream" is an international project, shot by a team of authors and united directors, artists, poets. Each of the guests of the 14th International Kan Video Festival held in 2015 was invited to participate in the creation of a general film, the theme of which was the relationship of man and landscape, civilization and nature, reality and sleep.

kuturar will guide the host of the episode Serafima through the overgrown after the fire forest and tell her about art inspiration and shamanism energy that invisibly appear in their music. Serafima will hang out at the kuturar concert on the rock festival "Kholbon" and travel on a boat to a scenic island on the river Lena, where a live performance of kuturar will be held and only crows will see it.

Meeting with the buryat rapper Bair Tarbaev and his project LUTAAR. Bair takes the host of the episode to his native ulus Sanaga, tells her all about nearby mountains' names and shows a religious service in datsan.We will see not only the beautiful buryat nature but Bair's parents house and his apartment-music studio as well.

Thanks to the leader of qaynar Radif Kashapov the host of the film Lera will open Kazan from a new side. They will take a walk along the embankment of river Kazanka, visit the national library of the republic of Tatarstan, go deep into the history of old tatar sloboda, rehearse in studio and more.

Meeting ethno-electropunk band HAGRIN from Kalmykia and going on a journey in Dark Steppe. But also it's a rave at the dawn, singing sands, burning water, kamlanie, mantras and beats. Journey begins with Kalmyk tale about wise Kooky, who wished to receive as a gift khan's left eye and instead gained everybody's recognition of her wisdom and married khan's son. Continue in the steppe, which is full of spirits. Here myths and legends become reality and something strange imagining in dawn's mist.

An avant-garde adaptation of the play by Georg Buchner about the last days of the Dantonists, representatives of the right wing of the Jacobins during the French Revolution. The director freely experiment with form and content, draws parallels with the present day and raises the question point-blank: why does the revolution, like the ancient Greek titan Kronos, always devour its children?

Rain does not caress the skin, the wind resists blowing, a soul is like a doll forgotten in the house of glass. Tikhon Pendurin’s piece “Death of Cinema” is a dream of a film, the process of falling asleep, a frozen cosmos, the liturgy of a sigh. Fotogénie, a return to the forgotten magic of magician Segundo de Chomon, the mystery of Val del Omar, Alain Resnais surreal theatricality “Death of Cinema” seems to absorb all the magic of cinema and confesses its own forgetfulness. The characters of “Death of Cinema” stand before the justice of truth, naive children turned with pride away from the audience. Here, the main thing is the hallucination of light, a whisper, a prayer, the bewildered physiognomy of cinema, which allowed itself to laugh at its own seriousness. (by Karina Karaeva)

Ragon bal remake traditional ossetian music, they structure national identity in a new way. The band has no need in national clothes for their performances, because traditions already live inside the musicians. Ragon bal present the subculture of caucasian post-folk. This music exists in conditions of global world and is not mainstream, but it's difficult to imagine cultural context of the region without it.