Movie/documentary
Chapiteau Show
by Sergey Loban. Russia, 2011, 207 min. Russian spoken with Dutch/English subtitles. Light-hearted epic on four kinds of communication (love, friendship, respect, collaboration). Not just another Russian 'art-flick' but an off-beat manifesto on freedom and the despair of being yourself. This contemporary puzzle plunges you into inspiring weirdness. Be ready for being crazy. A mysterious circus tent in a seaside resort on the Black Sea forms the start and end-all for bizarre stories filled with light-hearted absurdity. A teenage girl lures her sombre Internet friend very reluctantly into the real world. The main threats in this coastal resort come from fanatical boy scouts, deaf kids and gays. A famous actor yearns for a reunion with his son, and in the last part we follow an ambitious producer. The protagonists want love, friendship, respect and cooperation (the titles of the four parts), but get bogged down in aimless peregrinations that mock their ambitions. For outsiders, their personal tragedies are only comic and banal. Cheerful despair, surrealist winks and minimalist musical numbers set the tone in a play that is refreshingly different from the average Russian art film. Sergej Loban acquired a cult reputation in Moscow underground culture and won the Russian critics prize for his science-fiction film Dust (2005). Cast: Alexey Znamenskiy, Pyotr Mamonov, Alexey Podolsky