East of the West 2002 / Memorabilia - sobranije pamjatnych veščej / Russia 2001
Texts and commentary shape this strange tale which unveils eternal truths in the creative and amorous dramas of a day-dreamer. The hero invents his own biography and is now forced to re-create his fantasy in real life as an actor who plays the part of Hamlet. Before the premiere he is approached by an old man who asks him to represent a secret society.
This film defies a faithful description of events. It is constructed according to a principle espoused by its maker: “I consciously treated the story in such a way that it cannot stir the emotions. Shared experience is out of the question. The time setting of the simple, ordinary stories in the film has passed by, the film has duly become a developed art form. In literature, the time span of simple stories has long since passed and survives only in popular reading matter… For me, every person is a unique world, an absolute individual. And all the more creative. This self-definition requires him to do a single thing – to express his own world”. The hero is an actor who is, in fact, playing Hamlet. He invented his biography and now is forced to re-create it in real life. He is also approached by an older man who asks him to represent some kind of secret society. The “text and commentary” of the film are constructed as views into different temporal spaces, characterised by various props. The phantasmic setting of St Petersburg also plays a significant role in the film, and its mystical air is intensified by the strange faces of its characters.
96 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Yekatyerina Kharlamova
/ Screenplay Jekatěrina Charlamova/Yekatyerina Kharlamova, Alexandr Ivanov/Alexander Ivanov
/ Dir. of Photography Lalerij Lerner/Valeriy Lerner
/ Music Alexandr Locmonov/Alexander Lotsmanov
/ Editor Raise Lisova
/ Producer Jekatěrina Charlamova/Yekatyerina Kharlamova
/ Production Stikhiya Kino
/ Cast Romulad Makarov, Alexandr Čevyčelov/Alexander Cchevychelov, Nikolaj Burov/Nikolay Burov
Yekatyerina Kharlamova (b. 1970) studied law at Leningrad State University (1993), then took a course in television direction and computer graphics at the St Petersburg Institute of Film and Television (1998). She acquired practical experience as an assistant director (1991-1992) and in 1999 founded the film studio Stikhiya kino (Film Element) in St Petersburg with like-minded colleagues. There she produced her feature-length debut Text or An Apologia on Commentary (Tekst ili Apologiya kommentariya, 2000), awarded in Sochi, in which she flirts with the relativity of commenting on her own experiences and actions in the world around her. After Memorabilia (Memorabiliya - sobraniye pamyatnykh veshchey, 2001), she plans to film Chekhov’s The Sea Gull, envisaging in the work the literary figures Trigorin and Treplev as two extremes of Chekhov’s talent.
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