Evgeny Granilshchikov: Screening and Discussion

Date

Schedule

21:00–23:30

Place

Garage Rooftop

DESCRIPTION

Artist, filmmaker, and one of the winners of Garage’s grant program for emerging artists, Evgeny Granilshchikov will present films he has made since 2014, including his most recent work The Ghost (2016) as well as a fragment of his unreleased film Before the Dawn Our Dreams Become More Vivid. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Granilshchikov, and a number of cinema and visual art critics and political theorists.

Working in a wide range of media, Evgeny Granilshchikov is best known for his videos, photographic works and sound art. His films—exploring the life of the millennials—often feature long conversations filled with anxiety about the current political situation in Russia. Politics seeps through language, slips of the tongue and inaccuracies—the error, which reveals what is normally unseen, is one of the central themes in Granilshchikov’s work.

Blending fiction with experimental documentary making, Granilshchikov acts as a film director and contemporary artist, creating works that explore politics, language, history and the everyday and are always reflective of the medium. A recipient of the Kandinsky Prize for the Best Work by a Young Artist (2013), Granilshchikov was also nominated for the Innovation Prize in 2014 and 2015.

PROGRAM

Courbet's Funeral

This video was made from footage recorded from February to April 2014 and explores recent political history: the earliest protests against the war in Ukraine and the Bolotnaya Square case trials, and the time preceding the economic crisis. The work reflects moments of anxiety and uncertainty about the near future, with semi-documentary footage of everyday life reminiscent of hopes that have been indefinitely suspended. Courbet’s Funeral is a collage, blending video poetry with documentary, fiction with reality and politics, and creating complex associations rooted in personal and national histories. The film has preserved the tension and the confusion of the era which dissipates in the pink lighting of the final party scene to a Motherfathers soundtrack.

Courbet's Funeral
Video filmed on mobile phone
Director Evgeny Granilshchikov. Duration: 11'33 min, Russia, 2014


Unfinished Film

A girl talks on the telephone, a car drives by, a young man falls in an epileptic fit, a tram slowly turns at a crossroads, a panorama of a city at night moves from left to right. For much of the time we observe characters who are going somewhere or sitting and chatting with one another. Sometimes, the film speeds up its tempo and becomes like a teaser for itself, sometimes it slows down, and we see long, static shots—the movement of life in real time. Modern history, with all its attention to detail and its everyday rituals, always remains in focus in this film, shot without a script by chance. Filmed with a direct point of view, some medium-shot, but more often long shots, the interspersing of long and short episodes creates an uneven rhythm. In this film, there is no classical narrative, as if it has been assembled from chance scenes which have no unambiguous links between them. We never find out where the characters are going, what their aims are, but we see how an implicit feeling of alarm is hidden behind all their simple actions and movements. Unfinished film can be interpreted as a re-enactment of everyday life of the noughties.

Unfinished Film
The project is continually being updated
Director Evgeny Granilshchikov. Duration 27 minutes, Russia, 2015-2016


The Ghost

The Ghost is the story of a personal drama between two young people. We observe their regular life, the rhythm of which is interrupted by the hero’s recurrent disappearances. This may be linked to the shooting of a film which he is making, but this fact is left behind the scenes. After the hero skips his birthday party, the flat where he lives with this girlfriend is searched and she is questioned. Strangers in civilian clothes ransack the flat. We don’t find out the reason why it all has happened. It remains unclear what the connection is between the hero’s disappearance and the arrival of those strangers who are obviously interested in his film. The heroine is left alone and in the final scene—shot differently from the rest of the film—the hero stands near an abandoned pond.

The Ghost
Director Evgeny Granilshchikov. Duration 25 minutes, Russia, 2016


At Dawn Our Dreams Become Brighter. Fragment

The film follows three protagonists, the connection between them becoming clear as their stories unfold. A musician who stays silent throughout most of the film, a once successful actor disappointed in film, and his sister who has left professional filmmaking to shoot videos on her mobile phone, talk about their time, politics and their cultural traumas in a sequence of disconnected scenes that create a complex, non-linear narrative. The film is scheduled to be released at the end of 2016.

At Dawn Our Dreams Become Brighter. Fragment
Director: Evgeny Granilshchikov. 15 minutes. Russia, 2016

ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

Evgeny Granilshchikov (b. 1985) is an artist and independent filmmaker based between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. A graduate of The Rodchenko Art School in Moscow, he started making experimental shorts and video installations, photographic works and sound art in 2011. Granilshikov works in a wide range of media, often combining several in a single work, and was a recipient of the Kandinsky Prize in 2013. Winner of The goEast film festival: OPEN FRAME AWARD 2016. Shortlisted for the INNOVATION Prize. Nominee in the category "New Generation" in 2014 and 2015.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Admission is free, registration required