IN THE RUBRIC "VIDEOTEKA" our heroines talk about their favorite films and TV shows - important, vivid, inspiring, those that are hard to forget once you see them. In this issue, photographer and illustrator Nastya Pozhidaeva recalls her first seen adult film and confesses her love for Tarkovsky, animation and perestroika cinema.
INTERVIEW: Alisa Taezhnaya
PHOTOS: Ekaterina Starostina
MAKEUP: Irene Shimshilashvili
Nastya Pozhidaeva
photographer, illustrator
The visual part always interests me more than the essence: I want to capture frames, turn them into a photograph
As a child, my mother often took me with her to visit her godmother - so that I would not get bored, they sent me to the room to watch the TV. So my first adult film was "Show Me Love" by Lucas Moodysson, then it was shown often, and of course, he impressed me, although I did not understand anything. There was only a feeling that I saw something that my classmates might not have suspected. And I liked this feeling very much.
At school, I learned about Tarkovsky - and how I became obsessed with him. Most of all I was close to "Sacrifice": the frame where the house is on fire, probably my favorite, it seemed to me that I had not seen anything more beautiful. It was at that time that I started to get involved in photography and dreamed that one day I would take such a picture too. Then I found myself at an exhibition of sketches by film artists and decided that I wanted to be a production designer: I was preparing to enter VGIK for two years, did not enter, but I loved animation dearly and decided to become an illustrator.
From that moment on, I began to watch much more animated films, my favorites appeared: "Asparagus" by Susanne Pitt, or the Soviet cartoon "Miracle" with incredible futuristic landscapes. This is such a utopia, where in the kingdom of industry and communism a small outgrowth of something alive grows. I think it looks like abandoned factories and forgotten territories, where weeds reign instead of the hum of cars - and this is wonderful. As if they won in this fight. My passion for animation did not go away, but I started watching more films again - now taking screenshots on a regular basis. It seems to me that the visual part always interests me more than the essence: I want to capture frames, turn them into a photograph. So, gradually, I returned to what I really like - photographing.
I have a not entirely secret love for the films of perestroika time: I am attracted by freedom, devastation, endowed with a special romance, from which there is sorrow. And, of course, urban landscapes. I really like to know the locations - every time I am happy when I guess correctly. Well, these films, too, cannot be stopped being cut into frames.
ALEXANDER REKHVIASHVILI, 1986
Step
One of my really favorite films. Very beautiful and moderately absurd, in which, at first glance, nothing happens. A young nerd rents a room, looking for work and the meaning of life; his best friend washes endlessly in his soul in the kitchen and grows mushrooms in the basement; the owner of the apartment is very fond of eavesdropping and spying. Mysteriously, the hero moves from room to room, at some point a donkey appears, which everyone feeds with grapes. It is customary to expect rebellion from films of that time - young people demand change! - but it doesn't happen here. Nobody expects anything, except for the guests of the main character - they are waiting for him all the time.
AYAN SHAKHMALIEVA, 1989
It was by the sea …
As a child, I was often sent to a children's camp in Evpatoria. The film is set in the same city, but not in a fun, carefree camp, but in a boarding school for children with back problems. It has its own world, its own laws and its own truth. Here both children are treated and their psyche is broken.Instead of joy and fun, they have to overcome pain and fight for a place in their special world, where a child is considered beautiful if he does not wear a special corset.
SERGEY VINOKUROV, 1997
Ghoul
Film studio "Hard time", Kronstadt terminator, the fight against evil spirits, in which only an aspen stake can help. Instead of a fantastic world, there is the Russian provincial post-perestroika aesthetics, in which an infernal charm is hidden, and vampirism plays with other colors. The main character needs to get to the ghoul who leads everything, for which he has to sacrifice even his love. In the final scene, he sees his mirror image in the ghoul - but who won will remain a mystery.
VICTOR ARISTOV, 1990
Satan
The same Russian provincial aesthetics as in "Ghoul" - except perhaps without water. There is no longer any place for mysticism: everything is so real that it becomes scary. Cynicism reaches the limit - anxiety keeps you after the film for a long time. Evil wins, but it seems that good was not here. In the last shots, the main character waves his hand from a leaving tram - which means he will be back.
MAXIM PEZHEMSKY, 1996
Tough time
Again Russia and the 90s, the main character - a young director who borrowed money from bandits for his film - finds himself in a usual situation: the debt must be returned. The director is brought to the apartment, where everything is already ready. A cameraman with a camera, scenery and a simple task is waiting for him - to shoot a Russian porn film using materials at hand. Cinema is really on the edge - it's like "naked and funny" (or not always funny), a very cynical black comedy. Well, young Ivan Urgant in a role unusual for the present time.
ROMAN KACHANOV, 2001
Down House
The modern interpretation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot is a grotesque parody of the second half of the 1990s. It is quite logical to hate this film, which is probably why I like it. There are too many irrelevant things here, from the name to the vocabulary in the dialogues. Moral lack of principle, black humor, rude and ridiculous. I can quote this movie line by line - and it sometimes gets scary.
SERGEY SOLOVYOV, 2000
Tender age
The story of the growing up of a particular person, the eternal theme of the search for oneself and love. Throughout the film, the hero gets kicks of fate: perestroika and glasnost will blow the heads of all his friends. Nevertheless, first of all, this is a story about love, which becomes a lifeline in the ocean of madness. I like that it combines scenes of daring antics at school, a tragic main line, melancholic romance and unobtrusive absurd satire. And visually this is a really very beautiful film.
OLEG TEPTSOV, 1988
Mister decorator
The debut full-length footage, re-filmed from the director's thesis. The beginning of the XX century, St. Petersburg. The main character, competing with God, dreams of inventing something eternal and beautiful, not subject to death - and creates a dummy, which later comes to life and kills the creator in a gray machine. And all this to the music of Sergei Kuryokhin.
CHRISTIAN PETZOLD, 2000
Internal security
One summer I studied at the academy in Salzburg. It was raining all the time, it was pointless to walk, so I decided to watch a movie. There was only one selection criterion - it was obligatory in German in order to train the language (it didn't work out very well). Petzold's main characters are wanted former leftist terrorists. For the past fifteen years, they have lived in anxiety: they change documents, endlessly move and are afraid of new acquaintances. They have a daughter, Jeanne, who has never had friends or a home of her own. On one of these journeys, Jeanne meets the tourist Heinrich, a young auto mechanic. A casual acquaintance, of course, develops into a crush. I have always remembered “Internal Security” as a movie, accompanied by thunderclaps - and now it evokes only fond memories.
DENIS EVSTIGNEEV, 2002
Let's make love
My friend Vasya and I are now making a photo novel "Moscow Passions".I do not know what Vasya is inspired by, but I am partly by this film, it is like a revived magazine Cool. Everyone talks and thinks about sex, although in reality they expect great and pure love. The main character is puzzled by how to lose his virginity, against the background of this problem, the drama of the rest of the characters unfolds. Of course, there were bandits and deaths. Love turned out to be a medical student studying to be a pathologist.
