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Countryside 35x45
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Countryside 35x45
IDFA 2009

Countryside 35x45

Glubinka 35x45
Evgeny Solomin
Russia
2009
43 min
International Premiere
Festival history
All Soviet passports have to be replaced by Russian identity papers. This means lots of work for an unusual photographer with bushy eyebrows, a round, wrinkly head, and an immaculate handlebar moustache. He travels along barely passable roads of mud to remote villages in Siberia to provide everyone with a new passport photograph. We follow him everywhere: at home, on the road, and at work, in a succession of static, black-and-white shots. The film camera focuses on bystanders or the interior, or shows the final photographs while we hear the process that led to their taking. Old women pour out their hearts to the photographer, complaining about aching knees; a man says that, apart from an advance, he hasn't been paid in eight years; the photographer compliments a young woman, and lends a couple of workmen his jacket. After all, they have to look a bit respectable for the camera. Replete with observations of everyday life, the film provides an impression of a tough, simple, and above all old-fashioned existence. Mercifully, there are also lighter moments, such as when the photographer takes pictures at a wedding and ends up dancing with the guests. Whether the new passports will also bring modern Russian culture to this simple life remains to be seen.
Credits
Screening copy
    Kino-Siberia Film Production Company
    Kino-Siberia Film Production Company
World Sales
    Kino-Siberia Film Production Company
    Kino-Siberia Film Production Company