Garage Museum of Contemporary Art continues its series of film screenings with a showing of the artist and filmmaker Daniil Zinchenko’s Elixir, a participant in the Forum program at the 2016 Berlinale Film Festival.
Zinchenko’s debut feature is a work of contemporary art as much as cinema and revolves around two central metaphors: the horizontal physical life, with its quest for happiness, love, and universal solidarity; and the celestial vertical, with its dream of resurrection and eternity. Inspired by Andrei Platonov’s writings, this contemporary fairy tale is a story of scientists, guerilla fighters, cosmonauts, government officials, and the motherland, where each character represents a certain type, or a way of thinking.
The making of the film is a story in its own right: having failed to secure government funding, the crew decided to make the movie at their own expense. The movie has captured some of their enthusiasm: the crew speaks of cooperation in cinema as a new mode of production based on reciprocity in the professional community.
Elixir is featured in Forum, the experimental program of the 66th Berlinale Film Festival. The film was shown at the 3rd national debut film festival Dvizheniye in Russia’s Siberian city of Omsk and at the 14th International Kansk Videofestival. The screening at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is the film’s Moscow premiere. The film will be distributed in Russia starting on March 17, 2016.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director.
Elixir
Director: Daniil Zinchenko
Russia, 2015
Running time: 80 minutes
© League of Experimental Films, Cosmosfilm, Cine Fantom
The screening is organized with support from Reflexion Films and Nexi.
