Bread Day + Paradise

Sergei Dvortsevoy’s early observational documentaries hone in on people and communities on the margins of society, those excluded from the grander narratives of modernity and progress that populated the run up to the millennium during the final years of the 20th century. Capturing a time of transition in Russia and Kazakhstan in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union with a slow and steady cinematic gaze that allows the action to unfold in real time, Dvortsevoy’s films convey a feeling of communal frustration and alienation while also acting as records of ways of life that are on their way out.

BREAD DAY

1998 | 55 min

This film describes a journey through the Russian countryside, 100km away from St. Petersburg. In the village, nothing but isolated, elderly people remain. Once a week, they receive bread via a German wagon that was abandoned during the war. The train stops at the station in Jikharevo, several kilometers from their village. Through the snow the villagers then have to push this wagon along a completely obsolete railroad. But when the bread is finally ready to be sold, not everyone receives the expected ration. (Tënk)

PARADISE (CHASTIE)

1995 | 23 min

This is not a documentary in the traditional sense, rather a lyrical film about the day-to-day life on the Kazakh steppes, incorporating documentarily shot images. The film consists of thirty sequences that demonstrate that even the most elementary activities (eating, sleeping) can possess a great beauty, bliss and especially humour. The Kazakh filmmaker Sergei Dvortsevoy shot his film in three months, making use of no less than four cameramen. He entitled his meticulously framed film chastie — paradise —, which, in a period when most film products from the former Soviet Union were characterised by a melancholy look at life, is evidence of a great sense of humour, to say the least. (IDFA)