Hughesoffka - Letters from the Wild Field

Briefe aus dem Wilden Feld

D 2009 · 84 min

Donetsk

In 1870, Welshman John Hughes began developing the coal deposits and building the steel industry in the Donetsk Basin with a team of 100 British engineers. In no time, the once desolate border region experienced rapid growth—people spoke of a “New America.”

For nearly 50 years, Hughes and his sons ruled unchallenged in Hughesovka (Yuzovka). After the Revolution, the traces of the British were erased. Yuzovka became Stalino.

In 1929, Dziga Vertov created his film “Donbass Symphony”: coal mines, steel production, machines—dynamically edited. The new faith is materialistic. Churches became cinemas, power pylons replaced crosses; icons were burned and church domes toppled to applause. A bust of Lenin was carved by a young woman…

Almost eighty years later, people in the Donbass flock to newly built churches—and the new mosque.

Footballers, not miners, now pose as heroes.

The Donbass Arena for FC Shakhtar Donetsk is being built right in the city center, not far from the first monument to John Hughes.
Today’s entrepreneurs are eager to reclaim Donetsk’s capitalist founding father—who, incidentally, first introduced football to the region. In Wales, it had already proven to be an effective remedy against alcoholism.

The archive in Cardiff, Wales, still preserves evidence of that “Welsh period”: Letters and photographs documenting life in the remote Russian steppe.

THE MAKING OF

seeing is believing -
a documentary about vision,
neuroscience and filmmaking 

D/L 2005, 86 min, 35 mm, 5 reels, 1:1.66, Dolby digital 

However fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. "I wonder if all the things move along with us", thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried,  "Faster! Don't try to talk!"

- Lewis Carrol

Ladies’ Choice

Scenes from the Civilized West

1999 , 80 min, 35mm, colour


Photographed by Thomas Plenert and Victor Kossakovsky
Produced by Viola Stephan Filmproduktion
Distributor: Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek
Premiere: Berlinale (Forum) 2000

I Loved You...
(Three Romances)

Ya Vas lyubil...(Tri romansa)
102 min, Digibeta, b/w and colour

Directed, photographed and edited by Victor Kossakovsky

This trilogy was shot on three different formats which are given below. The first and third parts have been shown and awarded as separate films. "Pavel and Lyalya" is available as a 35mm print and "Kindergarten" on Digibeta.

First Part: Pavel and Lyalya (Jerusalem Romance)
(Pavel i Lyalya - Ierusalimsky romans)
30 min, 35mm, b/w
Second Part: Sergey and Natasha (Provincial Romance)
(Sergey i Natasha -Provintsialny romans)
20 min, Super 16, colour
Third Part: Kindergarten. Sasha and Katya (First Romance)
(Detsky sad. Sasha i Katya - Pervy romans)
52 min, DV, colour


With Lyrics by Alexander Pushkin and Music by Aleksandr Dragomyzhsky

Synopsis

(from the catalogue of the 30th International Film Festival
Rotterdam)

Love is not unequivocal, it is experienced by everyone in different ways ateach moment in life. But it is always intense, it brings beauty, joy andsorrow. Few are able to portray that as strikingly as documentary-makerVictor Kossakovsky. He demonstrates that with his trilogy I LOVED YOU, aboutthe relationships between two old people, two newly-weds and two children.The thread linking the three independent love stories is formed by songssung by Ivan Kozlovsky to lyrics by Alexander Pushkin, about trust, love andbroken hearts. The first part, PAVEL AND LYALYA (JERUSALEM ROMANCE) is themoving story of Lyalya who tends her fatally ill husband Pavel in acheerfully matter-of-fact way and with endless patience. In SERGEY ANDNATASHA (PROVINCIAL ROMANCE), the wedding day of two lovers is filmed. Theyhave chosen each other despite their sceptical families. SASHA AND KATYA(FIRST ROMANCE) is a dramatic jewel about love, treachery andheart-rendering sorrow at the infant school.The images are of a simple and impressive beauty. Kossakovsky has a sharpeye for the non-verbal expressions of the deepest emotions. He looks with somuch love and commitment that there is never any question of voyeurism. Hisinvolvement is sometimes very explicit: twice the director bursts out cryingbehind his camera. However maybe he is not crying, but there are, as Katyasays, "just falling tears".

Press

"An excellent triptych by the outstanding Russian director Victor Kossakovsky, crassly given a late slot ... for its enchanting final section."
The Sunday Times / GB, 31. Dezember 2000

"...quality documentary that wanders into the feature film genre....arthouse masterpiece that scoops loads of awards at film festivals..."
Evening Standard / GB, 31. Dezember 2000

"Victor Kossakovsky’s picture of three different romances is simply stated and moving..."
Daily Telegraph / GB, 2. Januar 2000

"... the film ... embraces extremes of experience and, by focusing on the narrow and particular, expresses the universal. It is an extraordinary experience to see television so demanding, so beautiful and so rich."
The Times / GB, 30. Dezember 2000

Awards

Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2001
First Prize for Foreign Film
Montreal International Festival of Cinema and New Media
Best Documentary

WEDNESDAY - 19.7.1961

SREDA, 19.VII.1961 directed, photographed and edited by Victor Kossakovsky
1997, 93 min, 35 mm, colour
[5 reels, 2.556m, screen ratio: 1:1,66]

Original Music:Alexander Popov Music Group:Strannye Igry Sound:Leonid Lerner Producer:Viola Stephan Production Manager:Elena Rejzentul

A SREDA FILM Production
in co-operation with ZDF Mainz/ARTE, BBC London, ROSKOMKINO Moscow, DOCSTUDIOS St. Petersburg, YLEISRADIO Helsinki and Eurimages

Press

"... revealing documentary mosaic about life in St. Petersburg..." The New York Times, 11. April 1998

"Bilder erzeugen Bilder, Töne verbinden sich mit Tönen (...); so verbinden sich die einzelnen Einstellungen und Personen in einer Montage von grosser Genauigkeit und pulsgenauem Rhythmus zu einer Erzählung, die in ihrem epischen und poetischen Gehalt dem 'Ulysses' von James Joyce ebenbürtig ist." Wochenzeitung, 7.März 1998

"Kossakovsky ist es gelungen, fühlenden Menschen jene Freude und jenen Schmerz spüren zu lassen, um deren willen allein Kino gemacht wird; er lässt sie über jene Dinge nachdenken, über die sie nicht nachdenken wollen." Seans, Nr. 16, 1998

Synopsis

Wednesday, July 19, 1961: it’s summertime and the newspapers are full of the usual articles. The world is comfortably embedded in the Cold War. An average day in Leningrad. 51 girls and 50 boys are born in Leningrad on this day.
One of them is Victor Kossakovsky. Why here and not somewhere else? Why then and not another time? These questions are the starting point for his film. Could it be that this child was mistaken for another in hospital? Who are all the people who began their lives on that same day? Do they somehow share the same fate or are they merely contemporaries?

"I spent a whole year tracking down the other hundred people born that day. Some of them are no longer alive, some have moved away from the city, still others have emigrated. Over half of this group, however, are still living in this city, now known as St. Petersburg. There are thin ones and more corpulent ones, some with lots of children and others who are single, some who are poor, some who are successful. Some are garrulous, others reticent. There are patient and doctors among them. Some are in the business of selling while others are consumers. There are car drivers and pedestrians in the group, artists and businessmen, a builder and someone who is homeless; a prisoner and an investigating magistrate; left-wingers and right-wingers; those who have religion and those who don’t. And we are all about to turn 36 years of age.”
Victor Kossakovsky, 1996

THE MAKING OF

seeing is believing -
a documentary about vision,
neuroscience and filmmaking

D/L 2005, 86 min, 35 mm, 5 reels, 1:1.66, Dolby digital

However fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. "I wonder if all the things move along with us", thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried,  "Faster ! Don't try to talk!"

- Lewis Carrol