Fantomas’ adventures ended a long time ago. A criminal in a mask disappeared in unknown direction. His unlucky chasers, Inspector Juve and Inspector Bertrand, got duped again. Many years passed since… Inspector Juve is on a pension and lives in his small house in Paris faubourg. Inspector Bertrand got married and is a happy father of a large family. A calm, warm existence in their old age. Fantomas was no longer remembered. But he didn’t forget. One summer day at the end of the month Inspector Juve went to the post-office for his pension. Nothing threatened him…Thus a new page of infamous criminal and his chasers commences…

Kolobakha is the first film of the independent studio AliBaster. It focuses problems of geopolitical kind. The action takes place in a world that is harshly divided into two camps. The first camp is formed by Russia and China, whereas the USA forms the second one. Defeated in a fair fight of political systems, American aggressors spoil the climate on planet Earth. As the result, Russia and China have been overwhelmed by eternal winter for 80 years, and the US has been embracing eternal summer.

Media opera is an experimental genre, an independent branch of video art. It has its own laws, based on musical dramatizing. The basic principles of a music work are applied to video. A relatively selfsufficient soundtrack becomes a centre point of the whole work, thus receiving a completely new life. This move makes up for the fact that nowadays, music is, perhaps unfortunately, not the focal point of any contemporary work. Media art is, quite on the contrary, an extremely called-for genre now, therefore, music, merged with video, receives a breath of fresh air within the scope of a media opera or a video opera.

Oleg Mavromatti: “I really can’t say in one word what the film is about. Perhaps, “it’s about America”. I had this idea to show a different America. It’s not Hollywood, it is a movie about vision and points of view. Unexpectedly I shot a movie which is understandable to American intellectuals. Now my fear is whether this movie would be understandable in Moscow? Culture is totally different! As they shoot in Hollywood, any one, any average student, with no brains can shoot. That’s why all independents keep looking for a new language. They look for it painfully and strangely. New forms appear, but no one can understand them in Russia. Of course, we do not talk about Lynch or Tarantino; they are just top of the iceberg, lucky few, who found their way.”

Scenes Of Bohemian Life is the ninth film of the director. However, it’s for the first time that he is using a classic plot as a base of his film. This plot is, probably, more known to the lovers of opera, rather than to the lovers of literature. Puccini’s La Boheme is loosely based on the novel by Henri Murger. Konstantin Seliverstov brings the action of his film from Paris of the 19th century to Saint Petersburg of the 21st century, at the same time keeping the French names of the main characters.

Troubles hang up on the heroes of the first part of the film. They all keep dying one by one following strange mystical circumstances. Dmitry tied himself up in knots. It was him who found bodies of his friends. He starts reflecting on his own psychological state. He is a main suspect for police. His girlfriend Jenia doesn’t believe him. Dmitry goes crazy.

Programme 1: The Fairy Garden, dir. Mike Kuchar, 11 min., 2007 Corruption of the Damned, dir. George Kuchar, feat. Mike Kuchar, 53 min., 1965 Programme 2: Hold Me While I Am Naked, dir. George Kuchar, starring George Kuchar, 15 min., 1966 A Reason To Live, 27 min., 1976 Wild Night In El Reno, 6 min., 1977 Yolanda, 23 min., 1981 Centennial, 14 min., 2007

Mashka, dir. Larisa Bocharova, 4 min., 2006 The Nail, dir. Yuriy Lonkoff , 2 min., 2006 Lynch Mob, Prosthesis Art Group (Igor Merejitskiy,Alexander Vilkin, Grigoriy Yushenko), 17 min., 2008 A Butcher Also Cries, dir. Victoria Kosheleva,Anastasia Polyakova, Natalia Uspenskaya and Ksenia Miskaryan 8 min., 2005 Gallows For Turtles, dir. Fedor Barkov, 12 min., 2008 Large Hadron Collider Test, dir. Marat Yunichev, 2 min., 2009 Hadron Collider, dir. Evgeny Goltsov, 5 min., 2009 Barrier, dir. Alexey Kouznetsov , 16 min., 2008