East of the West 2001 / Mesto na zemlje / Russia 2001
Artur Aristakisian set out with his camera to record Moscow’s disinherited, opponents of the system, seeking the philosophical justification for and practical fulfilment of their beliefs. He spent 1995-96 with a hippie community documenting the inhabitant’s ideological reversals, moral dilemmas, spiritual crises and disillusionment. The total isolation of this bizarre community of men and women, children and animal, beggars and cripples is only disturbed by police raids and attacks by various assailants. But their fanatical faith in the attainability of absolute freedom through free love becomes unbearable for some individuals, including their main ideologist. The filmmaker depicts the shattered reality of the deepest human decline in all its starkest cruelty. At the same time, he gives all events a purely Russian spiritual dimension which resonates with the poetry and moral pathos of an evangelical message.
126 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Artur Aristakisian
/ Screenplay Artur Aristakisian, Irina Shubina
/ Dir. of Photography Grigorij Jablochnikov/Grigory Yablochnikov
/ Music Robert Wyatt
/ Editor Natalie Topková/Nataliya Topkova
/ Producer Boris Ajrapetijan/Boris Ajrapetyan
/ Production ABA Studio, Ministry of Culture of Russia
/ Cast Anna Verdi, Vitaly Khaev, Roman Atlasov
Artur Aristakisian (b. 1961, Kishiniev) started making an amateur film about beggars in his hometown and finished it while studying at Moscow’s Film School (VGIK). The result was Palms (Ladoni, 1993), his graduation-debut film, astounding for the extent to which it identifies with the psychology and world of its protagonists. In 1994, the exceptional ethical and aesthetic value of Aristakisian’s debut was recognised with awards at many festivals, and at home he received a Nika for Best Documentary. The director’s notion, that even the poorest of the poor are happy because they live outside the system and are therefore free, is employed in A Place on Earth too, a film shot under amateur conditions using an improvisational method. Like in Palms, the monological text, music and sophisticated sound work to particularise and empower the filmmaker’s message.
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