Almost Spring

This is ‘a road movie’ encapsulated in the Moscow metro system and filmed over the course of one year: a documentary film that observes cultural and social issues in modern Russia.

The plot of the film is based on the large-scale reconstruction of the historical building of the HPP-2 power plant on Bolotnaya Embankment under the direction of architect Renzo Piano and the transformation of the power plant into a cultural institution and a cultural house of the V-A-C foundation, founded by Leonid Mikhelson. For five years, the process of fixing this reincarnation was carried out. The basis of the shooting method was the desire to show big events through the prism of the interaction of art and life of the construction site and the V-A-C foundation, through small details, through the people who are doing it all.

Katya, 8 years old, spends the summer with her grandparents in the countryside. Time stands still, adults remain silent, and a war in the background destroys lives. Meanwhile, kids are growing up and the clouds are flying.

Mila got diagnosed with tongue cancer. Instead of operation and chemotherapy she decides to try an unconventional treatment in the Amazon jungle of Peru and to make a film about her healing process.

The V-A-C art foundation is transforming the former GES-2 electric power station in Moscow into a new cultural space for the capital. In 2017, before work had even begun, a festival called Geometry of Now was held inside the station. As part of the festival, Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Dramatic and Mild was shown in Russia for the first time. In order to see the painting, visitors had to enter the workers’ recreation room, which measured just 4 x 4 metres.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Russians have started having dreams about their president and sharing them on social media. More than a thousand dreams about Putin have now been recorded and posted on public platforms. In Dreams About Putin, a selection of these dreams have been brought to life using Unreal Engine, a 3D graphics program for creating scenes for computer games. In this exciting experiment with form, the animations are complemented by rare archival footage of the Russian president. The dreams are related by a narrator, and their “translation” into 3D scenes is not literal; likewise, the archival footage has been lightly edited. The result is sometimes dryly comic, sometimes absurdist, sometimes disturbing, and sometimes even hopeful. A series of bizarre but therefore oddly familiar nightmares as a vision of Putin’s Russia.

The chapters of a Russian funeral procession offer a meditation on ritual and loss.