To mark Ilya Kabakov’s 85th birthday, Garage has produced a documentary film Poor Folk. Kabakovs.on the life and work of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov directed by Anton Zhelnov.
Poor Folk. Kabakovs features Ilya Kabakov who reflects on the origins of his art—his mother’s tragic fate which impacted his mindset and the subsequent coming of an age and evolvement as an artist. Together with his wife and co-author Emilia, they discuss Soviet unofficial art and the emergence of Moscow Conceptualism, their move to Europe and the US, and how, following a “thirty-year long exhibition hunger” (as Kabakov refused to exhibit publically in the USSR), he received worldwide acclaim: today, Kabakov’s works are in the world’s top museum collections, including MoMA, New York, the National Museum for Modern Art – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
Prior to the screening, deaf scriptwriter Polina Sineva will speak about documentary film and its genres and will explain the term “snake zone”—before inviting visitors to engage in discussion dedicated to the methods of using historical materials in contemporary documentary film.
Poor Folk. Kabakovs
Russia, 2018
16+