Daydreaming in the Hood. The Eight

Date:

15 Mar 2019–15 Dec 2020

Place:
Shchukino District

The result of the V–A–C Foundation’s first film project, produced by a team of non-professional writers.

Daydreaming in the Hood is one of the most ambitious works within the the Expanding Space. Out of the Centre programme. Determined to explore the city and how it changes and affects its inhabitants, the director Andrey Silvestrov and the V–A–C Foundation film programme curator Kirill Adibekov created a film workshop that brought together 28 people who have never made films professionally before. Each issue of the web series is dedicated to one of the workshop participants: it consists of portrait interviews as well as films and videos made at the workshop.

It is important to say that our workshop was not a training one in which I would have acted as a teacher: it was always, first and foremost, an artistic project. It was not about teaching but about total involvement in a collective artistic process. When we conducted the interviews I was struck by how amazingly interesting people have joined us, how unique, talented and compassionate they all were. In fact, this experience, this sincere admiration for a human being as such, was what I really wanted to share with the viewer. And that is what we do in this web series.

— Andrey Silvestrov

The interviews with the participants are filmed following the so-called '180-degree rule': the camera shooting the interviewer and interviewee is not permitted to cross an imaginary line uniting their gazes. And although the camera's point of view and the extent to which it closes in on its subjects may vary, a sense of presence is thus maintained. This technique allows a conversation continue indefinitely.

The V–A–C Foundation’s own film production began in 2019, when, in conjunction with the League of Experimental Cinema, we launched the Daydreaming in the Hood project. The resulting almanac was selected for the competition in the programme of the Spirit of Fire Debut Film Festival (2020), just as the short films of the participants embarked upon their own independent lives. In this sense, the web series is perhaps the most intimate part of the project. Each episode is a portrait of one of the "debutant" authors. Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, these short stories go to the essence of what Daydreaming... and its creators are about: focused interest in the individual human beings.

— Kirill Adibekov, V–A–C Foundation Film Programme Curator

The series was shown in two seasons: the first season premiered on the official YouTube channel of the Iskusstvo Kino (Art of Cinema) magazine, the second — in the Sreda online magazine.

In partnership with SNOB and Radio Kultura.

Produced by:

Director — Andrey Silvestrov

Camera — Daniil Fomichev

Script — Lyusya Artemyeva

Editing — Yuri Golubev

Curator — Kirill Adibekov

Producer — Stasia Dementieva

The series characters

Season 1

Katya Zubkova — student, translator from Japanese

Yura Golubev — film editor, founder of Uzbekistains first noise band

Yana Sidorkina — artist, Moscow vice-champion in Tae Kwon Do

Yana Osman — sociologist at the Higher School of Economics

Alexandra Kharina — stage designer

Vladimir Milovanov — oncology surgeon

Ivan Susarin — musician, performance artist, member of the VASYA RUN project

Svetlana Yakovleva — student at the Higher School of Economics, professional swimmer

Season 2

Oleg Koronny — scriptwriter, journalist, film director

Vladimir Vyalov — computer programmer, media artist, student of Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia

Anastasia Vereikina — animation directing major at the Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK)

Mikhail Bodukhin — film editor, retired computer programmer, amateur cinema scholar

Pyotr Voloshin — Muscovite from Sevastopol, Russian language and literature scholar

Elena Skripkina — theologian, artist, graduate student in religious philosophy