Russian filmmaker Petr Joukov recently won our sister website’s film prize for March 2010 for his film Maranatha. I managed to track Petr down in Moscow recently to ask him a few questions about his film.
Hi, tell me a little bit about your background. What got you into filmmaking, and who do you draw your inspiration from?
A long, long time ago I studied physics in Moscow State University, but then I discovered many more possibilities in art making, and now I have finished Moscow Rodchenko Art School faculty of New Media and the film “Maranatha” was the result of my first work as member of Vidiot art group formed by students working with video and video language.
As for inspiration, I draw it from culture in all its dimensions: internet, all sorts of movies from b-movies to arthouse and blockbusters, artworks, etc. But shooting this my film I kept in mind several filmmakers: Andrei Tarkovsky, Jim Jarmush, necrorealist Yevgeny Yufit, Derek Jarman, Ken Russell and that famous western trilogy by Sergio Leone.
Where did you get the idea for your film?
As I stated above we formed art group Vidiot. And one of the first organization ideas was to start making a periodical and thematic videomagazine “Vidiot” (by now we have made 5 issues already) and the chosen theme for the first issue was “psychogeography” and it was my idea to research one particular Moscow district Cheremushky.
I should say that for our group in working with video there are two important moments: longness, for the spectator to be wrapped up in the art work and for work to go away from Youtube video culture; and the second is working with narration. So it was an idea of making a film or I can say: narrative video-art on the edge of cinema and space of contemporary art.
Having the place to work with I had an idea to mythologize it, so I gathered all myths, stories, significant places and people of the district (it was vyatich`s burial mounds, bitsevo maniac who killed women in park, old mansions and Brezhnev`s panel buildings, nuclear physics institution in an old mansion, unofficial art exhibitions and contemporary artists living there and many other things). Then for me as an artist it was important to connect this all on art as well I am very interested in connotations of art and religion. So I came to a plot of a Vyatich made like a golem by a curator to defeat feministic discourse (it`s connected to situation that women are still discriminated in many cultural spheres in Russia and to the conspiracy theory in art) and he walks and kills women artists with an axe like a bitsevo maniac (and film starts in Bitsevo park) and I just threaded all the significant places and situations on this story.
Tell me about the casting process and pre-production? How did you assemble your crew?
Casting was quite simple. For the lead character I needed a special and crazy actor and I invited to act my friend good artist and filmmaker Danila Zinchenko (and he was the only who had actor practice before in one of Yufit`s film, because I do prefer to work not with professional actors) and for the roles I invited young and perspective artists from our school or I knew.
The sound editor was also an artist from my school as well as composer and my wife helped me as production designer, being a professional in this field. She helped me a lotwith making the story board which was used much as a scenario, while the film is with no speech mainly and for me the visuality is the main language.
What did you shoot the film on, and with which particular equipment?
I used school equipment and shot the film in HDV on cassettes on Sony Z1 camera. And we used Sony PCM-D50 for sound recording. For one scene shoot in school studio 3 dedolights was used (I prefer to works with ambient light).
How long was your shoot?
We shoot the film in about 7 days (day for a scene), so totally it was less than a month. Most time I spent during pre-production and building the story, it was about 3 months (Summer).
Where was it shot, and were there any issues with locations?
The film was mainly shot in the Cheremushky district of Moscow, in different parts of it: such as Bitsevo park, Kashenko lunatic asylum, nuclear physics institution and other strange places. One scene was shot in a school studio, because I wanted it to be like from Jarman`s “Wittgenshtein”.
What was the editing process like?
It was quite exciting while it was my first film to edit and I just started studying editing while working on film, so most of my problems was more about technique that working with plot, while it was quite straight and consisted mainly of long shots with in-frame montage. As for the time, it took me about month and a half to finish editing.
There was one funny thing with choosing music for the film. At first I wanted it to be without music at all, just sounds. But while editing I was sitting in one room with my friend and musician Georgy Zhuravlev and he have been listening all the way soundtrack from the “Deadman”. So finally I asked music like it for the film.
What did you edit the film on?
I used Mac G4 and Final Cut in school.
How are you finding things since winning the ReelShow competition?
It was really great and unexpected. I`m glad I achieved for the video art work to work well in both spaces: cinema and art. And cinema for me is also a good way for ideas to spread in culture.
While to be honest, I should mention that I worked much with art ideas and video language, while as for cinema language I used mostly readymade material from cinema culture – things from Jarmush “Deadman”, necrorealism, Tarkovsky are quite visible. But I think it could be right way for contemporary cinema as for the art at total.
What’s your ambition? What aspect of the industry do you aspire to be involved in?
As i`m an artist my ambitions are in the field of art career, but I can say that the main ambition is to influence culture much in the way I see and can. And cinematography gives good ability for this. I would be glad to have a possibility to shoot a high budget film with several levels of perception of it.
What’s next for you? What are you working on at the moment?
As development of some ideas from “Maranatha” film we just finished production and now making promotion of a full-length video-film “The Way of Samodelkin”. It`s a collective (experimental in this way) project made to reveal obscured situation of 90-th, especially art situation of that time, in Russia and to put it into culture, for this it was shot by laws of cult film with involvement of cultural important characters, places and texts. We even have David Lynch as a cameo in it.
And know we are working on film discovering situation of 50th – 60th and unofficial art and mystical groups in Moscow of that time. It is based on to books: “Moscow gambit” by Jury Mamleev and “La Vie de Boheme” by Henry Murger and documentary materials.
Who is your favourite filmmaker?
Ken Russell
Finally, what’s the last film that you saw and the best film that you have seen in the last twelve months?
The last film I saw was “Columbo. A Trace of Murder.” and a short film “Phylosopher`s dog diary” by Danila Zinchenko. As for the best, I have seen too many films in the last twelve months so I`m sure I`ve forgotten the best, but I can be sure for naming the best one “The Limits of Control” by Jim Jarmush. It`s very close to the ideas and methods I try to work with, as well as the Vidiot art group.
You can watch Petr’s award winning film Maranatha in it’s entirety on our sister site ReelShow.
