Edward Crabtree

IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY….

A Moral Panic has set in in Russia and other post-Soviet states over the internet-lead youth craze of Quadrobics.

When the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met up with his Armenian counterpart last October, he opened the discussion with a mention of what he called `one of the most important news items`. The bespectacled man-of-substance was not referencing the demographic ruination of his own country nor the imminence of an exchange with the West in which atomic weapons could be in use. He was lamenting the rise of quadrobics among Russia’s youth and asking whether Armenia was suffering the same disgrace.

Mad or fad?

Quadrobics – or Kvadrobika – consists of a portmanteau word fusing `Quad` (four) with aerobics and is a New Age unofficial sports subculture. This has been promulgated online, via Tik-Tok in particular. The game constitutes a player running and jumping on all fours. A mask of a fox, cat, dog or wolf may be worn and animal behaviours imitated.

Its origins can be traced to one Kenchi Iko, otherwise known as `Tokyo’s Monkey Man`. This cleaner turned athlete made it into The Guinness Book of Records for achieving the fastest 100 metre run – on all fours (The Independent, 12/11/15).

This innovation, supplemented now with a bit of animal cosplay, found adherents in America and Germany. Following that, a key source called Introduction to Quadrobics was posted online by Iridescent in 2015 before going viral five years later.

The demographic for this craze is made up of 7 to 14-year-olds. For reasons we can but only speculate on, quadrobics has taken particular root in Russia, Ukraine and the CIS countries as of last spring.

Russian companies have been quick to capitalise on the craze by supplying the paraphenalia [uzum.vz]

A Subject of Scandal and Concern.

The catalyst for the backlash arrived last summer. It did not come at first from Duma deputies and Church dignitaries but from a pop starlet.

Twenty-seven-year-old Mia Boyka was playing at an open-air concert in Nadym, north-east of Moscow, when an 8-year-old girl, being lost, came onstage to locate her parents. Boyka, seeing that the girl was donned in quadrobic gear, used the occasion to lambast the child for her hobby. This brusque behavior became a cause celebre with other pop singers, like Egor Creed, coming to her defence (even wearing a cat mask as he did so). Other celebrities, like Ksenia Sobchak also chimed in in support of the girl and her past-time. The battle lines had been drawn.

Quadrobics has some very young followers [Youtube]

Some of the ensuing quadrophobia issued from those who – either with sincerity or to score a point – joined the dots between this new fad and other wilder subcultures. Therians, for example, are those who believe themselves possessed of an `animal soul`. Furries, on the other hand, like to take on the roles of anthropomorphised animal characters. Neither of these trends have an inherent link to quadrobics and nor, for that matter, does the LGBTQ+ community.

Apocryphal tales have also helped to ramp up the panic. It is said that in Odessa a pack of quadrobers attacked an elderly lady and in Omsk a woman walked about with her child on a leash. Meanwhile, in Serpukhov, a town in the Moscow oblast, a mother took her 12-year-old to the vet to be vaccinated (these stories came to me – unsourced – from the blogger Setarko, 20/10/24).

Among the politicians to lambast this youth craze was none other than the Ombudsman of Children’s Rights in Tartastan, Irina Volynets. As someone who argued for the decriminalization of domestic violence, her objection to the `removal of boundaries` in this sport comes as no great shock. Deputy of the 8^th State Duma Tatiana Butskaya went further in characterizing quadrobics as `satanism` last July.

The Russian Orthodox Church seems to concur. One berobed eminence suggested that young quadrobers should be deprived of the use of toilet paper, as `what use does a cat have of toilet paper? ` (Belsat: East European Review (Vlog), 29/10/24).

Another prominent nay-sayer is Nikita Mikhailkov the grandfatherly Slav Nationalist head of the Russian Cinematographers Union who is a familiar talking head on the Rossiya 24 T.V channel. His take on is predictable: it is a Western LGBTQ+ plot.

This stance, however, is not unanimous. Ekaterina Mizulina who heads the League for a Safe Internet opposes banning it (Gazeta.Ru, 3/10/24). Even the arch-conservative Vitaly Milonov, a State Duma Deputy, has also said the same (Life.Ru, 27/04/24).

It remains to be seen whether the Kremlin will take action against this craze. However, kindergartens and schools are already holding cautionary pep talks with their charges about it.

The kids are all right.

I have spoken with a number of teenage ethnic Russians and Kazakhs about quadrobics. The subject elicits a little embarrassment. Most deny personal involvement in it but know those who partake. There have been quadrobic events held in the central park in Karaganda, Kazakhstan (where I am based). The motive for the sport is boredom and a desire to stand out, they have told me, but it is in decline, possibly due to ridicule. The one middle-aged mother who I have asked about this refers to it as a `perversion`, citing its Japanese origins as evidence of this, yet without much strength of feeling.

My own feelings are ones of relief that some members of Generation Alpha have torn themselves away from their chatbots, got offline, are meeting each other in person and are `touching grass`. The videos it has birthed are sometimes works of acrobatic art. Besides internet crazes are nothing new: we have had bitch slapping, geolocation treasure hunting, the `ice bucket challenge` and many other such fads come and go before without the sky falling down.

The moral panic in Russia about quadrobics just seems to be another facet of the cancel culture which has befallen Russia since 2022 in particular. The pulling of Empire V from the cinemas, the slamming of `propaganda for childlessness`, the reported banning of Halloween celebrations from some schools and the recent curtailing of a tour by the rock-band Kis-Kis (for which I had tickets) are all similar examples.

However, the game Dungeons and Dragons is still with us after all these years (for better or worse) and there were those in the West who tried to outlaw that when it first began.

Lead image: Pinterest.com

BACK FOR MORE.

A tribute band revists a collection of Russian rock standards to big audiences in Kazakhstan.

Russian rock, as a national genre, seems less current than it once was. Most devotees of this part of the world-rock quilt refer back to the last four decades for evidence of its greatness.

In the Russia of now many of the big names, if they haven’t decamped to Georgia or Central Asia, are keeping their heads down and just retreading old glories.

As far as recognizable brands go, the twin poles of contemporary Russian rock consist of, in one corner, the mock-dissolute rock-and-rolliness of the girls of Kis-Kis (known for chanting `Fuck the war!` at their live gigs) and, in the other corner, the Z-friendly corporate pomp rock of Shamen. The beauties and the Beast. Take your pick….

The Silver Age of Russian rock now gets packaged as a commodity. It was so for this tribute band performing a medley of Russian rock oldies in Karaganda in Kazakhstan, as the promotional blurb for the show makes clear:

`This is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the atmosphere` it says of `songs that have become symbols of an entire era`.

The band responsible – Jazi Orchestra – hardly seem to cast a shadow in the Anglophone interweb. All I can tell you of this six-piece is that they seem to be ethnic Kazakhs for the most part and are known for offering retrospective covers of Western and Russian rock. For this they appear to be as famous as you can be, short of having household name status.

Illustrious location.

On a sunny but already nippy early September I weaved my way to Shalkyma Concert Hall in central Karaganda. Named after a symphonic poem by Almas Serkebaev, this concert hall, better known for hosting operas, represents a sample of late Constructivist architecture. Throughout the building’s 85 years existence it has been the `Oktyabr` cinema and, during the Second World War, a military depot. In more recent days the interior of the place has been renovated by a local architect called Sergey Soshnikov. In particular, the installation of flexible gypsum boards on the ceiling has given rise to a much-vaunted reputation for good acoustics in the building.

Plaque on the wall of Shalkyma Hall dedicated to Bulat Syzdykov, the legendary Kazakh guitarist.

However, it is a seated venue and this was a rock concert. Being recumbent reduced the audience to passive spectators and the lighting banished the nocturnal quality needed for such events and the lack of a bar made the necessary abandon of a rock gig out of reach.

Mellow gathering.

The hall, with its capacityof about 200 people, was soon filled. The punters were Slavic in the main. There were few, if any, blue-haired boot wearing engineering students and many expanding waistlines and receding hairlines and some had their children in tow.

The band looked a decade or more younger than their fans. The mop-haired lead guitarist, Sultan Muratov, resembled a refugee from a Nineties slacker band and the deadlocked bassist one from a grunge band. The keyboardist was a studious looking Raikhat Muratali and providing the rhythm section (as well as trumpet at one point) was Kaset Nurpeisova.

The two warblers consisted of Alan Salpagaron, with an acoustic guitar on hand, and Roza Nurpeisova (the wife of the drummer, we were told). A statuesque Kazakh in leather trousers, it was she who provided much of the visual focus of this gig – for this ticket holder, at least.

Also eye-catching was the projected backdrop behind the band, courtesy of an `artistic director`. Sometimes this was all psychedelic mindscapes and at others we got clips from films and TV shows which the songs had some connection to.

Alan Salpagarov – before a projected backdrop.

Exhibition.

Over the next hour and a half, the personable half-a-dozen would lead us through a roll call of fourteen or so iconic Russian rock numbers. So well established were these that I recognized most of them even if I couldn’t put a name to them all.

Included were B-2 (`Varvara`), Kino (`Peremen`), Zveri, Total, Gorod 312 (`Ostanus`), Time Machine, Alyans, tATu (`Not Gonna Get Us`), Slot, Korol ii Shut, Spleen, Yulia Sachayeva and…whew!…beyond caring.

Something that I had not foreseen was the heartfelt delivery on the part of the band. Between the pogoing of the bassist, the excursions into spontaneity of the drummer and the smiles of the singers one might almost have thought that they were doing this for fun.

The medley was rounded off with a sort of lottery. With predictable sentimentalism, little ones were cajoled into coming on stage to read out from some random lists and from this a winner was decided. Someone on a balcony seat won a holiday in Turkey!

Memory lane trip.

In the row in front of me, a husband and wife sat with their ten-year-old son perched between them. Throughout the performance they both fixed him with questioning gazes. Would he appreciate this part of their youth that was being unscrolled before him? The event was a foray into the lost youths of the audience.

However, at no time did I feel bored by this gig. It was pleasant pure and simple. On the way out I saw queues of people waiting to come in. The same concert was due to be repeated in half an hour. A hard-working band – that’s Jazi Orchestra.

THE WINDS OF PEACE.

More and more leaders and commentators are seeking a diplomatic endgame to the tragic Russo-Ukrainian war. Can this still be achieved?

The Slav versus Slav civil war known as the Russo-Ukraine conflict is reaching its third year. To gauge the toll of life so far is not so easy. Wikipedia puts it at 50, 000 people (which does not include those injured). For the Russians the figure already exceeds those lost in Afghanistan or Chechnya.

Meanwhile some 30% of Ukraine, including its protected areas, have been contaminated with landmines and unexploded ordnance.

Should you step back and take a long view of the whole debacle, Phaedrus’s phrase `two bald men fighting over a comb` springs to mind.

The prospect of Russia conquering the whole of Ukraine seems like a pipe dream. Even were it achieved it would require Russia to then govern a nation full of saboteurs and endless threat of NATO incursions, as well as increased dependence on China.

On Ukraine’s side, they will never be accepted as a member of NATO while they are at war with such a large power. Nor is Ukraine considered by the European Union to be at the right stage of political development to be welcomed into the fold.

Yet still the prevailing mantra of most commentary in Western Europe is that we must provide Ukraine with military backing for `as long as it takes` (whatever that even means).

Jens Stoltenberg – NATO Secretary General and a sort of Norwegian Tony Blair -thinks he knows. He has advised us that Europe `must be prepared for a decade of war` (BBC, 8^th July 2024).

How prepared are we though?

War sceptics.

Malevich’s Black Square – which is used as a meme by anti-war Russians [fruitnice.ru]

A recent poll conducted by the European Commission of Foreign Relations in twelve European countries in January of this year found that only 10% of people believed that Ukraine will be the victor. This figure may have changed a bit since the incursions into Kursk (of which later) but a more significant finding is that 37% of respondents take the view that the war can only end through diplomatic negotiations. Meanwhile in Ukraine – as reported by the Kyiv Independent this July 15^th– 44% of the public think the time is right for such negotiations.

Some commentators make comparisons with the Finland Winter war of 1939 to 1940 where Finland won lasting autonomy by conceding 9% of its territory to the Soviets. Even a seasoned diplomat like Henry Kissinger recommended Ukraine to consider a similar option.

Green shoots of sanity.

In the infamous interview with Tucker Carlson of February 11^th February this year, Putin stated that Putin would recognize an independent Ukraine if only it were not hostile to Russia. We are, he said, ready for negotiations. This claim would later be reinforced by a statement by Dmitry Peskov on August 1^st (RIA Novosti, August 4^th, 2024).

At around the same time the Eurasian Daily informed us that Andrei Yermak, Head of the Office of Zelensky said:

`We need to end this conflict` and went on to propose that peace talks `could take place in the countries of the global south` (August 2^nd, 2024).

The much-loved Russian vlogger Konstantin Samailov of Inside Russia recently broadcast a session titled `Peace is coming`. In this address he made a number of observations about the economic bind that Russia now finds itself in. He also suggested that Russian society is ditching its `war marketing` and that the pro-war messaging from the mass media has begun to mellow in favour of a `new narrative conditioning`.

Opinion formers step up.

In Britain, signs have also appeared indicating a sea change among the intelligentsia.

Emma Ashford works as a Senior Fellow for the Re-imaging U.S Grand Strategy in Washington. In a piece for The Guardian (22^nd April 2024) called `Did Boris Johnson Really Sabotage Peace Between Russia and Ukraine? ` she looks at the spring talks in Istanbul that occurred in 2022. She concludes that while there was no deal in existence to be signed Russia was ready for compromise. She concludes:

`If Western policy makers can step in and persuade Ukrainian leaders to fight on in 2022, they can offer advice about entering into negotiations in 2024 and beyond`.

On similar lines, the long-standing journalist Simon Jenkins, writing for the same paper, wrote an opinion pieced called `Farage’s Ukraine Comments Were Not Offensive`. This began with a reference to the loquacious leader of the conservative Reform Party in the U.K who disconcerted some by daring to suggest that Russia and Ukraine should sit down and (quoting his hero) `Jaw-jaw rather than war-war` (Churchill).

Jenkins, whose political orientation is very different from Farage’s agrees with him on this issue:

`The West’s urgent task must be to get Putin off his self-impaled meat hook and stop the bombing and killing` (The Guardian, 24^th June 2024).

A bit earlier a joint letter had appeared in The Financial Times. This was signed by Lord Sidelsky and eight other prominent academics and journalists. Headed `Seize the Peace Before it’s Too Late` it insisted that:

`Washington should start talks with Moscow and a new security pact which could safeguard the legitimate security interests of Ukraine and Russia…. this would immediately be followed by a time limited ceasefire in Ukraine [which] would enable Russian and Ukrainian leaders to negotiate in a realistic, constructive manner`. (July 10^th, 2024).

Diplomatic offers.

As early as March 2022 Turkiye and Israel put themselves forward as mediators between Ukraine and Russia. Their framework consisted of Ukraine remaining neutral but with multilateral security guarantees and a fifteen-year consultation period on the status of Crimea (quincyist.org).

China too, despite its close economic ties with Russia, has made repeated calls for `harmony` between the warring nations. Their first 12-point peace plan was praised by Segei Lavrov as `the most reasonable one so far` (Reuters, April 4^th 2024).

However, they followed this up with a 6-point peace plan produced in tandem with Brazil which they claimed had the support of more than 110 countries (Pravda Eng, 3^rd August 2024).

Also, this year, Hungarian President Viktor Oban, in his role as the rotating leader of the European Union, toured many countries touting his own peace solution. This called for a ceasefire linked to a deadline that would allow for peace talks (BBC, 12^th July 2024).

Last April Recep Erdogan, the President of Turkiye unveiled his own peace plan. The proposed measures involved a ban on interference in other countries affairs, a complete prisoner exchange, freezing the war on existing terms, a foreign policy referendum in the Ukraine by 2040 and Ukraine joining the European Union but not NATO (N.V. Nation, April 11^th, 2024).

So many peace proposals have been put on the table, but the question is: Can Russia and the West ever work together?

Co-operation is possible.

Americans and Russians do remain capable of joint activities in certain areas. Astronauts and cosmonauts carry out missions with one another on the International Space Station and are projected to keep on doing so until at least 2025 (Moscow Times, December 28^th 2023).

Then we had the prisoner exchange at the start of this August organized between Washington and Moscow. Twenty-six people were exchanged in these negotiations making it the largest such swop since Cold War times (C.N.N. 1^st August 2024).

Moreover, the most significant international deal (as well as the first one) was brokered on July 22^nd 2020. In the Black Sea Grain Agreement, Turkiye, the United Nations, Ukraine and Russia co-signed a pact in Istanbul which ensured the safe passage of grain exports.

What about Kursk?

All that said, there may be many who are in agreement with the foregoing but feel that Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russian territory has ended any hope of further talks and diplomacy and indeed has led to a ratcheting up of the situation.

As much as Western military pundits have hyped up this bold action, there does remain something symbolic at work here.

At the time of writing the Ukrainian military have seized land that is in rough terms about the size of ten per cent of the Greater London region in the UK. Lives have been taken, of course, but the Ukrainians have taken many more Russian conscripts as prisoners and have otherwise given the Kremlin the time and space to plan mass evacuations of thousands of people from the affected regions. For their part, the Russians have not taken any drastic inhumane measures such as carpet bombing the area and the much-feared prospect of reprisals with nuclear warheads has not materialised.

Military experts seem to concur that the Ukrainian army is not that likely to be able to continue to advance that much further into Russian soil. The Ukrainians themselves have stated that they do not intend to keep this land forever. So, what is really going on here?

Putin himself may have hinted at the deeper motive behind this gesture. In an emergency meeting with officials he said of it:

`It appears that the enemy is aiming to improve its negotiating position in the future` (Channel 4, 13^th August, 2024).

What future negotiations did Putin have in mind exactly?

The diplomatic offensive.

The winds of peace are blowing and to know which direction they are blowing in we must ignore the siren voices of superficial rhetoric. One fond rhetorical illusion is the one which tries to frame this war as a repeat of the Second World War. The Western press likes to paint Ukraine as another Poland in 1939. Similarly, Kremlin propaganda seeks to portray the `special military operation` as an extension of The Great Patriotic War`.

However, just as the Ukraine is not just teeming with neo-Nazis, so too nor is Putin a contemporary Hitler. I know of no serious evidence, for example, that he or his regime holds any designs on the Baltic states, still less Sweden. Citizens of the `democratic West` must, with right and left united, lead the charge of the diplomatic offensive. They must make their anti-war views known through all channels from demonstrations to petitions and demand that the leaders of the world pull the plug out of the meat grinder.

Monument to peace in Kokshetau, Kazakhstan.

Main image: gas-kvas.com

BETTER THE DEMON WE KNOW….

`DOMOVOI:`A new Folk Horror fantasy from Russia pits an an old folk goblin against the Devil himself. Is it evidence of a coming `patriotic` trend in Russian cinema or something more subtle?

Domovoi represents the first Russian film in the horror genre to come my way since Detektor from two years back. (We could mention Claustro here, but for all its ethnic Russian connections this remains a Kazakh product).

Two weary years and three months have dragged on since Russia’s commander-in-chief ordered his tanks and soldiers to make their way into a neighbouring sovereign nation. Many Russian motion pictures doing the rounds since that fateful day will have been produced and shot previous to it. Now, however, enough time has elapsed for us to start to see products produced in the atmosphere of Russia in a time of war. Domovoi is one such a film.

Domovoi came out from Nashe Kino on 4^th April of this year. It consists of an overt contribution to the folk horror subgenre. This subgenre has gained traction in many countries of late with such films as Midsommar (2019) and, from Indonesia, Dancing Village: The Curse Begins (2024). Here regional folklores form the basis for supernatural terrors in the here and now.

Guest from Slavic folklore.

Here it is the turn of the domovoi to be the creature that gets featured. This East European hobgoblin, also known as the Old Man of the House, dwells in the back of stoves. He may incorporate the spirit of a long dead family member. Sometimes also taking the form of a pig or a cat, the domovoi’s main role is to defend the hearth and home, although he can be capricious. (Nor is is he just from the past: I have spoken to at least two young Russian women who were prepared to give some credence to his existence).

The screen friendly version of the domovoi. [horfor.online]

Old hands.

A Chelyabinsk born 48-year-old called Andrey Zagidullin sat on the tall chair for this film. He already boasts a track record of a string of TV thrillers to his credit such as Senser (2019), Phantom (2012) and Whirlpool (2022) like a Podgaevsky of television.

The script is from Ivan Eliseev (Syndrome, 2021) and Maria Ogneva who worked on the rather similarQueen of Spades 2: Through the Looking Glass (2019).

The two main stars are Vasilia Nemtsova who is but 14 and whose cameo performance in Epidemia (2019) drew comment from one Stephen King saying that it gave him goosebumps (Yandex.KZ/turbo, 5/12/2019).

The muse: Vasilia Nemstova [Kinoteatr.ru]

She acts alongside the fresh-faced twenty-year -old Oleg Chugunov who has been quite prolific with screen appearances of late, but who I last saw six years ago in the leading role in Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest.

Natalia Vdovina and Vitaly Kishenko are convincing enough as the conniving step-parents but the player who gifts the drama with a real classy presence is one Rosa Khairullina. This award winning 62-year-old actress, like a sort of female Peter Cushing, brings a palpable forbidding gravitas to her role as a female shaman.

Rosa Khairullina stealing the show [Kinoteatr.ru]

Displacement.

The main action opens in a primitive but alluring wooden dacha in a rural area (it would not have beern so out of place in Onegin in fact). Artyom (Chugunov) and Varya (Nemstova) live there a spartan life as, having lost their parents in an accident, they are looked after by their elderly and ailing grandmother – and they look after her too.

When she croaks her last on her bed, she leaves the young pair the advice that, in accordance with long held lore, they should take a piece of coal from the current residence and transfer it to the fire of any new household they should find themselves in.

Later, installed in a new school the kids are soon taken by a wealthy couple in the architecture business. Their home, as might be expected, is all minimalism and swish modernity in the Scandinavian style. Artyom makes an effort to gel with this new beginning but his younger sister feels uneasy and cannot.

The residence does have a fire, however, and the children, remembering their granny, consign to lumps of coal from their old house to its flames.

It is from that point that the things begin to befall the house. An entity seems to be making itself known. The step-parents, who have been hiding their own murky secret, decide to call in the services of a witch to banish this spectral intruder.

`What do you know about the cult of the ancestor? ` this imposing woman asks of her clients. She is making reference to the domovoi….

The fantasia will take us through various rituals and the action will lead us back to the old dacha. There a possessed Varya in league with the domovoi will unleash their sorcery to battle with the Great Horned One himself….

Sombre story.

It is the direction and then the photography that impresses the viewer at first. The former establishes a kind of doomy intensity which pervades everything and the latter evokes a crepuscular world of washed out blues and shadows.

The moody soundtrack, for which the much in demand 53-year-old Chuvash violinist Alexei Aigi is responsible, reinforces the sense that this is no disposable teen flick of a film, but something treading deeper waters.

In spite of this Domovoi does trip up. It unveils the monster far too soon in the narrative and then the culmination is a showdown in the style of a VyatcheslavPodgaevsky film (Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest et al) where every mainstay of contemporary horror film – floating people, attenuated screaming, glowing eyes…ad nauseam are all rolled into a ball and hurled at us.

A film for its time?

The cinema in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where I saw the film on April 6^th was fuller than such films are as a rule. Indeed, there is something of a chasm between the critical response and what the ordinary punters are saying about it. The latter seem satisfied at seeing a proper scary movie and one with a national flavor. The magazine critics though, riding on the back of their unshakeable view that Russians can never do horror, have carped at all manner of technical details about the plotting or the script.

There were some more nuanced write ups. Alexey Litovchenko writing in Kinoreporter.ru dubbed the film `the first patriotic mystical horror`. He did so on account of the fact that the character of the domovoi `personifies family values, the memory of generations, spirituality and all that is native and age old`. The witch, on the other hand, embodies `imported Western mysticism`.

Litovchenko seems to have hit on something here. Of course, Podgaevsky has been churning out similar kind of homespun occult yarns for over a decade now, but Domovoi seems to have nailed its colours to its mast in a more blatant way that any of his ever did. Can we bracket this film in the same surreptitious Z-patriot league as Onegin?

One thing that confuses the matter is the closing scene. The two orphans, their old home having been burnt to the ground and their would-be minders carted off by the politisia, find themselves alone in the morning moping though the ashy ruins with nothing but an old icon to provide them with any comfort….Could this be a metaphor for a desolate and isolated post-war Russia?

All political underpinnings aside, there are two fresh features in the film which I enjoyed. One is the location in a modern building quite unlike the hackneyed Old Dark House backdrop to such tales. The other is the fact that it upended the usual `the-Monster-be- Bad` expectation.

Main image: Youtube.

`We must change `em all!` The Political Significance of `Evgeny Onegin`

Pushkin’s classic has been claimed by different generations. Is the latest screen ONEGIN anything more than a sterile extravaganza designed to glorify Russia’s Imperial past?

Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel `Evgeny Onegin`is the best-known work of Russia’s national poet and upheld as a pinnacle of Russian literature. Alexander Seergevich, an aristocrat with some African heritage, harboured sympathies with the Decembrists who plotted against Tsar Nicholas’s extended autocracy. Penned between 1825 and 1832 and published in serial form before the standardized version came out in 1837, `Evgeny Onegin` was very much about Pushkin’s time. It also represented a turning away from Romanticism and towards a new Naturalism.

The novel concerns the life and times a young nobleman – a `madcap youth` – blighted with `the British spleen/Transported to our Russian clime`. This takes place over eight Cantos which end on a rather avant-garde cliffhanger. It is known that Pushkin had some further Cantos up his sleeve but destroyed them possibly because they contained rebukes to the Tsar himself. There is even a tantalising suggestion that Onegin’s fate was to have been him joining forces with the Decembrists (whose attempted insurrection ended in 1825 when the novel finished).

What we are left with is not an obvious political protest (although it is difficult to imagine young Onegin being enlisted into any kind of army campaign). It is more a cautionary tale. Moving from the social whirl of St Petersburg to an estate in a village, Onegin meets a German romantic youth who is to become his best friend. He, in turn introduces him to a shy young woman – Tatiana – who becomes besotted with him. The best friend Onegin slays by accident in a pointless duel and he rebuffs the woman. Later, older and wiser and having been travelling he returns to reclaim Tatiana but now she is married and she leaves him in limbo….

Onegin as a metrosexual [source:Pictures pibig.info]

A Hero of Whose Times?

`Evgeny Onegin` proves a challenging work to realise on the screen, being based around the tone of its narration and a solitary anti-hero. The first attempt, from the trailblazer of Russian film Vasily Goncharov came in 1911. It would take another staggering 47 -years for another cinema version to appear – in the form of a filming of Tchiakovsky’s opera.

The new standard.

Coming out on March 8^th, Women’s Day, of this year and just before the predetermined re-election of Putin, the newest film version was directed by Satrik Andreasyan. Known for his commercial approach to film making, he hails from Armenia but embraces the pro-war cause with the zeal of the convert.

`You should be ashamed to show such disrespect to your country`, he told fellow artists on Twitter who had come out against the war in February 2022.

Onegin comprises a lengthy and opulent family blockbuster. It gained first place in the box office for March 7^th to 10^th making 331 million roubles I four days (Dzen.ru, 11/3/24).

Through an Imperial lense….

Most people’s previous encounter with `Evgeny Onegin` will have come via one of the best-known operas by Tchiakovsky. This dates from 1878, a time when Russia was embroiled in the Russo-Turkish war (in which Russia sought to regain territory lost in previous engagements). This masterpiece, by the author of the 1812 Overture, cemented the novel’s reputation as a national mascot. However, it also relegates the anti-hero himself to the role of a supporting character. It is Tatiana and her feelings which take centre stage in this opera.

….and a Soviet one.

Post 1917, Tchiakovsky’s piece had become a part of the operatic repertoire. Nevertheless, the imperial grandeur it displayed was now out of step with the building of a communist future. Refreshing new directions in realism resulted. Now the players had to contend with mosquitoes and some of the scenery, such as the fountains were shown to be in a state of disrepair (to symbolize the moribund nature of the bourgeoise). (Operanews.ru/1610).

Following the Great Patriotic War, however, a measure of pomp and circumstance became allowable again if it could be framed as part of Russian national heritage. In 1958, as the Soviet Union’s third Sputnik whirled around the Earth, Lenfilm laid on a technicolour treatment of Tchiakovsky’s classic directed by Roman Tikhomirov. Still, this does not seem excessive in grandiosity: the focus is all on the character’s emotions as brought out by actors with opera singer’s voices dubbed on top.

Foreign interpretations.

The South African John Cranko adapted `Evgeny Onegin` into a ballet in 1965 (just called `Onegin`). For this he used the music of Tchiakovsky, but not from the opera. Here the emphasis was on a man who, despite all of his wealth and privilege, nevertheless finds himself ineffectual. This toured Leningrad in 1972 and elicited criticisms from a Russian audience who felt their national property was being trod on. Tatiana’s name day celebration in the ballet was in the summer -when every one knows it would have to be in January, and so on. Nevertheless the ballet has since been much staged in Russia. I caught it in Moscow just a few years back.

The British actor Ralph Fiennes played the titular role in Onegin from 1999. Fiennes had already made his name seven years earlier playing a similar Byronic character, Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights. Here Onegin is portrayed as a tortured soul in the Gothic tradition. This was an overt English interpretation. Yet it is the case that Pushkin name checks Byron’s antihero Childe Harold a few times in his novel.

Picture perfect.

Onegin 2024: accent on the splendour [recommend.ru]

The new Onegin comes with the tagline: ‘The love story that conquered the world`. Like `Doctor Zhivago` then, it is being framed as a romance, which is a half-truth. Throughout its two and a half hours running time it retells the story with efficiency. We get to see some location shots – the Palace of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Alexandrovich and the Pushkin mountains. We see brass knockers, wood burning samovars and white top hats. It all looks new and clean and everything is arranged before the camera for the best view. Unmemorable muzak of a classical kind underpins it all. Some are comparing it to the British film Pride and Prejudice (which came out in 2005, when the U.K was party to an invasion of Iraq), but it is too well-scrubbed for even that comparison.

The main players – Viktor Dobronravov (Onegin) and Elizaveta Moryak (Tatiana) are 41 and 29 respectively. There may be something in Andreasyan’s claim that the middle-aged of today are the teens and twenty-somethings of yesteryear but the sociopolitical concern with disaffected youth is lost. In particular, the tall and stocky Dobronravov looks more like an alpha-chad than any superfluous man.

Also lost is the saucy foot fetishism of the narrator, Tatiana’s involvement in pagan divination, the disheartening journey to Moscow, the mistreatment of the serfs and – above all -the mordant take on the upper-middle-classes (`Rogue and enchanter of yore/now buffoon, glutton and a bore`)

Let’s allow some caveats. Dobronravov does do a good line in ennui. The character of Lenski is well realized and the wonderful Alexander Yatso features as Tatiana’s husband. Also, there is an interesting innovation where Onegin has a parallel dream to that of Tatiana’s.

This constitutes a Z- Patriot film at heart. It looks forward to the past. It is a bland and kitsch waxworks museum and too precious to offer any nourishment for either the mind or the soul.

All quotations from the text (which includes the title) come from Henry Spalding’s translation published by Karo, St Pwetersburg, 2017.

The lead image, showing a scene from the 1958 film, is from:bacilleraticoefilo.com

ALLOWED TODAY….

A cinema adaptation of a once banned novel, directed by an opponent of the war and starring some non-Russian players has become a box office winner in Russia.

Russia Beyond have dubbed Mikhail Bulgakov’s most famous work, Master and Margarita `one of the favourite novels of all Russians`. This accolade holds in spite of the novel having featured in the Russian school curriculum for the last twenty-two years.

Bulgakov – Muscovite, physician, playwright and novelist toiled on this epic novel for the best part of two decades. That is, between 1928 and up to his death at 48 in 1940.

The strictures of the Stalin -lead Soviet regime, where `Socialist Realism` was exalted, proved the kiss of death to the visionary wildness and mockery which is central to Bulgakov’s voice. Not until 1968 – and in Paris at that – did a version of Master and Margarita see mass print in its entirety.

Poisoned chalice.

Since then this fantasia has left its fingerprints all over the culture worldwide. It is hard to conceive of Sergey Lukyanenko’s brand of Urban Fantasy or, for that matter, Viktor Pelevin’s `post-modernism` existing without Bulgakov’s prior prompting.

Then, for instance, the actor Daniel Radcliffe is enough of a fan to have travelled to Moscow to pay homage to the House of Bulgakov which is to be found there, as a birthday treat.

There have been repeated endeavors to enact Master and Margarita for theatres and for celluloid. A few of these have ended in tears. You can even hear a predictable rumour to the effect that – like the …er…`Scottish play` – a sword of Damocles hangs over those that would produce it. Nevertheless 2005 saw a much-repeated television series of it by the controversial Vladimir Bortenko.

Foreign agents.

Film poster for `Master and Maragrita (2024)`
[Wikipedia]

This latest version has been threatened for some time and has changed hands once or twice. At one point it was to be called Woland (the name of the magician figure in the story). Even with the traditional name the producers seem keen to stress that this is no straight reproduction of the source material.

The director is the 45-year-old Mikhail Lokshin, who studied psychology at Moscow State University, now resides in America and has made his disagreement with the invasion of the Ukraine clear. Roman Kantor, known for Epidemia , the television thriller that made it to Netflix, is the scriptwriter,

Alongside Evgeny Tsyganov, a Muscovite with a very lengthy string of screen appearances to his credit, as the Master, stars his real-life wife, the model Yulia Snigir who hails from Donskoy in the Tula region – as Maragarita.

The German West Berliner August Diehl plays Woland and the Danish actor Claes Bang, best known for playing the lead in a 2022 British production of Dracula, is cast in the very different role of Pontius Pilate.

Crazy Circus.

Evgeny Tsyganov (Master) and his real life wife Yulia Snigir (Maragarita) in a fictionalised Moscow [journal.tinkoff.ru]

In this story, the Master works as a writer in the U.S.S.R of Five-Year Plans and purges. His latest play, which concerns Pontius Pilate, receives a hostile reception from a committee of fellow scribes with the result that his play is taken off. The Master’s despair is lightened somewhat when he encounters the elegant wife of a colonel – Margarita. They click at once and she becomes both his muse and his cheerleader.

In a fine conceit, the more fantastical events for which Master and Margarita are celebrated occur in the Master’s brain, sparked off by a meeting with an eccentric foreigner, and which forms the basis of a new novel.

Some of the antics of Woland and his merry troupe have been left out of the film but there does remain the exciting chase through Moscow and the conjuring show which culminates in money raining down upon the grasping Soviet citizens. The damned talking cat, Azazello is present too, of course – with some no too obtrusive C.G.I.

Then we get the cathartic scene which is Margarita’s story. She makes a Faustian pact with Woland’s set. Able to fly and become invisible she enacts vengeance on the tormentors who have imprisoned her husband in a mental asylum.

Also retained – being crucial to the overall coda – are the sequences involving Pontius Pilate in Roman ruled Jerusalem. We see him lower his own moral instincts and accede to the crucifixion of Yeshua Na Naziri – Jesus Christ to you and me. Interspersed into the main action, these scenes seem to be taken from the Master’s own aborted drama.

Extravaganza.

With a reputed 1.2 billion rubles at his disposal, Lokshin has laid out a feast for the eyes. (the lavishness reminds me of the film Empire V). The cast are all walking works of art (one of the Committee critics resembles Heinrich Himmler).

The Moscow of much of the film represents a parallel one where, for example, the planned Palace of Soviets has been built and zeppelin-like dirigibles are a common form of transport for the elite.

The lighting and colour is crepuscular and this, taken with the ruminating score by Anna Drubich (who worked on the American film Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark two years back), conjures up the right sense of sinister mystery.

Woland’s lines are in German and the Jerusalem scenes seem to be in Latin. This bold directorial decision is then compromised by the recordings being revoiced by the actors in Russian. This begs the question as to why they were not subtitled.

Enigmatic tale.

The author with his baffling masterpiece [kp.ru/afisha/msk]

When I first slogged through Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita some years ago,I reached the last page with a feeling of irritated bafflement. What was Bulgakov trying to tell me? Russian readers told me that it was about Love or about Stalin. Then again it could be an expose of the kind of cowardice that Pilates gave in to. All of these readings could be true at the same time, but the novel still strikes me as one big riddle.

The Russian reviewers of this film have noticed a new relevance in it. Other than all being unanimous that the foreign actor playing Woland has excelled the others, they have picked up on the iconic line, `It’s allowed today, but not tomorrow`. The uncertainty as to what can and cannot be said in today’s Russia has given this sentence a new resonance.

Those who would shut down the film are out there. One Yegor Kholmogorov, columnist for the Russia Today channel, has characterized this release as `propaganda for satanism and terrorism`. Does he speak as a representative of those in power? Today maybe not, but tomorrow…

Small focal point.

I caught the film on a cold day in mid-February on a weekday afternoon showing in a small cinema in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Even so, I found myself among a flock of about twenty young ethnic Russians. Argument i Fakti (11^th February, 2024)informs us that Master and Margarita has taken only second place to the ice skating feelgood drama Ice 3 and has already brought in 208.2 million on the weekend of 17^th and 18^th February alone.

Perhaps Kholmogorov and his fellow Z-Patriot cohorts can gain succor from the Curse-of-Master and Margarita-adaptations and just wait for it to work its magic.

Main image: sport.express.ru

SATAN CLAWS ARE COMING TO TOWN!

THIS BOLD NEW OCCULT THRILLER IS THE FLAGSHIP FOR A NEW GENERATION OF KAZAKH FILMS – AND THE LOCAL PUNTERS ARE TAKING NOTICE!

With Tatraria Films comes an 18+ certificated `mystical drama thriller` called Dastur, which is Kazakh for Tradition

Throughout its 90 minutes we get a kind of Revenge Tragedy (the film’s tagline is an old Kazakh saying: Let the neck answer for what the hands have done). This is served up with a demonic possession scenario and set in the here-and-now of contemporary Kazakhstan.

The mastermind of this comprises of one Kuanysh Beisekov. He is a 28-year-old director who studied photography after quitting a mathematics course. Before Dastur he has been known only for something quite different. For YouTube he directed a series of popular musical comedy shorts entitled Irina Karatovna.

The players are not that much more well-known either. The most mature of the actors, Aldabek Shalbaev at 65 plays the unsympathetic role of the scheming father of a rapist has done big screen time before in the gangland thriller Taraz (2016).

The lead actor consists of the Almaty resident Ermek Shynbolatov who has done some television work before now, having appeared in the melodrama serial Togzhan (2022) about the lives of television journalists. The crucial female lead is taken by Nurai Zhetkergen. At only 18-years-old this is her first role in a feature film.

The female writer Kazybek Orazbek, who had scripted the comedy Steal Your Money also last year was the main writer alongside Aldar Zhaparhan, who seems to be more of a newcomer.

Shot in the arm.

Released on December 28^th last year, Dastur arrived as a sizzling meteorite that hit the earth just on the eve of the long-awaited winter break in Kazakhstan. With lurid promotional graphics and a provocative title, the new film could not have been more of a challenge to the vanilla family comedy fare which hits the screens in this season.

Not known for its edgy horror films, Kazakh cinema has made some reasonable attempts to emulate Korean or Japanese horror. For example, M-Agent (from2013) featured the spirit of a young woman bent on vengeance and had an interesting middle-aged woman for a heroine and In The Dark from 2018 was your classic `don’t-go-hiking-in-the-mountains` yarn and worked on that level, yet both could not escape a sense of being cottage industry products.

Vzyapherti from last year (and reviewed above) was quite refreshing, being a well-made ghost tale (rather more than full horror) but, the Kazakh director aside, seemed somewhat ethnic Russian in its whole cast and outlook.

Then there is Tor (Grid), also from last year, This might be called `psychological horror` with a sort of update on Kafka’s The Trial but would be too `mundane` for most horror film devotees.

Dastur is as full on horror as it is full on Kazakh and it may well deserve its reputation for being Kazakhstan’s first `true` horror motion picture. Release the bats!

NOT a family comedy for once….[KZ.Kursiv.media]

Keeping it real.

What ensures the effectiveness of Dastur is its docudrama like approach to the narrative. The first half of the film presents us with a sort of bird’s eye view of life in a present-day Kazakh village in the summer. We see an end of term school celebration, some male-on male bullying, and tensions between generations. The otherworldly elements arrive by stealth, forestalling any resistance. Friedkin’s over celebrated 1973 classic The Exorcist, which pulls the same trick, could well have been the template here. (Indeed, the film contains a cheeky self-referential wink: one of the main characters, the young Bolat, is seen wearing a The Exorcist baseball cap in one sequence).

Dastur neither boasts nor needs a panoply of special effects. Nevertheless, the one unsettling spectacle of a man creeping on the wall is achieved with audacious simplicity,

Villagers.

After the above-mentioned scene setting, the focus falls on the two young protagonists, Bolat and Diana. The former represents the spoilt and wayward son of a wealthy livestock farmer and the latter a desirable and talented daughter from a more modest local background.

One fateful evening, following the school celebration, a dissipated Bolat takes Diana by force. For this he is flung into the jail of the regional police force to await trial. Bolat’s father, however, is a bigshot in the local community and soon he sets the wheels of exculpation in motion.

The loaded daddy proposes a traditional way out. If Bolat makes an honest woman of Diana, by marrying her, this will erase the sexual indiscretion – and free his son.

The elders scheme to get Diana married to her abuser [KZ.Kursiv.media]

Diana’s parents are set against this outrageous imposition and spurn many entreaties to make it happen. Money talks, however, and they, at length, settle for a dowry of ten million tenge (the local currency) in cash. The wedding which follows is a tense farce. On the wedding night Diana vanishes and Bolat finds that she has attempted to hang herself in the forest. With a new found tenderness he takes her to his parent’s home and tends to her behind locked doors, ignoring any attempts his mother or father make to intervene.

What happens next is that a two headed calf is born on the father’s farm and Bolat’s mother is spooked by freak television broadcasts showing Diana as a young girl. This is only the beginning of a spectral rampage….

Plenty here to creep you out [KZ.Kursiv.media]

There are parallels here with Carrie (1976) and, in terms of the melodramatic focus on family differences, Hereditary (2018).

Wider relevance.

The very title of the film signposts one of the main themes here: the iniquitous nature of some of the customs still in place in central Asia outside of the major cities.

A switched-on Kazakh might even notice some arch allusions to the real-life murder case centred around Salthnat Nukenova. (In brief, the wife of the ex-Minister of the National Economy, Kuandyk Bishimbyaev, died of bodily harm which it is alleged was inflicted on her by her husband. It is a hot topic in Kazakhstan and the investigation is ongoing).

Yet despite this apparent critique of Kazakh cultural heritage, the sole hero of the film – like the catholic priest in The Exorcist – is an old school holy man, an imam.

Success story.

My experience of getting to see this film met with unique obstacles. On the first attempt I was informed that all the tickets had sold out and on the second I just managed to get one but shared the cinema with a packed crowd of ethnic Kazakhs. (Contrast this with my more typical experience of finding myself in a near empty hall). Needless to say, Dastur has been granted an extended run in many cinemas.

For me it was the impassioned performances that I found most notable. (Shynbolatov told Elle Magazine in January 2024 that he visited a psychiatric facility to prepare for his role. It was not a wasted expedition.) The unsettling ambience of this film is generic enough to please the horror film demographic yet it bears its own stamp and stays true to Kazakh sensibilities. Also, it blindsided me with an unexpected plot development.

Main image: Kinopoisk.ru

The Old Dark Apartment.

Is the screen Chiller CLAUSTRO (VZYAPERTI) the first neo-Gothic Sovietcore film?

The arrival of this film last September was heralded by elaborate installations about it in select cinemas – a rare promotional effort on behalf of such a low budget affair. Had it not been for that, I would not have been one of the dozen or so punters who turned up for a late showing at a central cinema in Almaty late last September.

The 3-D film promotional installation which was on display at Dostyk Plaza cinema this September.

Filmed in Kazakhstan and by Qara Studios, CLAUSTRO or VZYAPERTI, constitutes one subtle and quite distinctive hour and thirty minutes of supernatural chills.

Two titles for it are out there – VZYAPERTI being the most common and which translates as `Locked In`. This however is also the name of a recent Hollywood thriller, as you will discover should you attempt a search on this film, even in Russian. So, I am going to go with CLAUSTRO which sounds fresher and more evocative anyway.

Kazakhstan’s brush with cinematic horror has been more bite-sized and recent that that of the Great Bear’s, so CLAUSTRO might be taken as something of a test case. It is significant, therefore, to note that this film shines a flickering lamp into the current relationship between Kazakhstan and its former overlord in the in the North, the Russian Federation.

Almaty inspiration.

Shot two years earlier, but released in September 14^th of this year, CLAUSTRO adapts a novel by an Almaty novelist, Alexander Mendybaev who has posted online a number of supernatural suspensers, the one in question being TENANTS from 2017 (since published by Meloman in the summer of this year).

The bright young director responsible for the on-screen realization of it is 35-year-old Olzhas Bayalbaev whose directorial debut was with the film GOK, also released this year, which tackles the thorny issue of corruption among civil servants. However, Bayalbaev grew up with R.L Stine stories (as he told an interviewer with Optimism K.Z on 14^th September this year) and horror was in his blood.

As for the screenplay, another Almaty resident, 32 -year-old Sabina Tusupova, known for her part in the nineties-based drama ZERE from 2021, teamed up with the author Mendybaev to write this. The retro-modernist musical score, so important in an ambience lead production such as this, was brought to us by a twenty-something musician known to many as Dana Tunes, or Dana Zulpykhar.

Roman Zhukov, 35, from Aktobe (Kazakhstan) who also appeared in the Kazakh portmanteau horror SCARY STORIES TO TELL AROUND THE CAMPFIRE from 2018, plays the main protagonist. His stately side-kick however hails from Rostov-on-Don in Russia -Elizaveta Yurieva- who starred l in the Russian TV series CLINICAL 13, broadcast last year, which fuses medical drama with the occult.

CLAUSTRO will resonate with anyone who spent any time in Soviet period housing. The visual iconography here is all of that and its corresponding period. From this base the proceedings conjure up a sense of spookiness. As well as landline phones and record players, we get to see Soviet era TV shows, toys and confectionery. The brown and grey/pale blue colour scheme is well judged and some of Bardag Arginiov’s photography could be stills from Vogue magazine or the like.

Entrapment.

Max (Zhukov) is driving on an errand to hook up with an old friend. We discover him as he motors through the steppes and alongside a glittering reservoir (much of the film was shot in Kapchagai – AKA Konaev, a popular tourist destination on the banks of the Lli river). On arrival he finds himself in a standard Soviet block of flats and interrupting a large family get-together which his friend enjoins him to become a part of.

Max is encouraged to join the party. {orda.kz]

It proves to be a predictable mix of tedium and drunken flirtation until, that is, the elderly paterfamilias at the head of the table begins to intone some odd, witchy imbroglio….

Max leaves the room and there meets Kima (Yurieva), the snooty resident of the flat, who has done the same. When they head back, they are aghast to find that all the guests have vanished and the room appears to have not been inhabited at all in recent times. Next, they discover find that there is no way out – all the exit doors lead them back to where they began. They are entombed in a world of endless receding mirrors reflecting mirrors, like some nightmarish Escher creation. The child phantoms then begin to appear and they are to learn that they will never escape until the issues of these ghosts from their past are laid to rest….

In fact, despite the striking nature of the premise, we have here a traditional trope from many a ghost story, that is the righting of old wrongs. One could even frame this film as making a comment on Kazakhstan ‘s ongoing troubled connection with its own Soviet heritage from which it is unable to escape whilst haunted by specters of past injustices.

Mendybaev and Bayalbaev deserve some credit for noticing, at last, the potential for neo-Gothic ambience that Soviet housing has long had. This is even a bit homely. (We see Kima, for example, painting her toe nails in a languid way whilst listening to Soviet jazz on her record player). The token love interest that arises from the two glamorous inmates does not seem forced, but it does detract a little from the claustrophobia of the central situation.

A style conscious motion picture. [Marie-Claire]

CLAUSTRO took me back to the Russian film KONVERT which I reviewed here a few years back. Both are supernatural dramas produced on a limited budget, oozing the atmosphere of post-Soviet urban environments and with redemption themes at their cores. CLAUSTRO could even pass for a Russian film, with its Slavic cast. It is a bit of a mystery, however, why this film, unlike KONVERT, should be restricted having an 18+ certificate.

CLAUSTRO is not a shocker but a stylish and indeed somewhat `hipsterish` art house movie. It is not all that likely to make many waves in mainstream cinema but it remains to be seen if it can kickstart a new interest in the horror genre among Kazakh film makers.

Lead image: Vlast.KZ

CATCH UP: Stigmata Eight Years On.

Saint Petersburg’s Veteran rockers tour Central Asia with their brand of Russified Metalcore.

I am perched in the darkness in my coat on the metal stairs which lead to an upper level. I sip now and again from a Budweiser which had taken me an age to get. Ahead of me, obscured in part by a throng, four men bathed in white light ooze a racket. I am trying to rewind to eight years ago when I first caught sight of this ensemble….

Established icons.

STIGMATA constitute a heavy rock outfit most often pigeonholed as `Metalcore` (stripped down heavy metal with a punk approach) or sometimes `Emocore` (confessional lyrics conveyed in a highly charged manner). As a part of the Russian subcultural landscape, this foursome has beavered away on the scene since they first picked up their guitars and mikes in Saint Petersburg in 2003.

Along with the likes of Jane Air and Distemper they were set in motion by Kap-Kan records, the self-styled `alternative to the mainstream` rock label who but a year after their formation released STIGMATA’S Conveyor of Dreams album. Since then, they can boast five more studio albums and a many single, their latest being `Polusa` (Poles) from this year.

Cover for the new single: `Poles.`
[Zuk.com]

During that time there have been many comings and goings of personnel, but the ones that I beheld were the were the same as the lot at the Red Club in Moscow eight years ago which included two founder members. The new boy is the clash-and-bang merchant Gregor Karpov who has been with the band for but a year.

They are beginning a tireless schedule of a gig each evening. Having come from Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan) on the 6^th October they will play in Tashkent in Uzbekistan after Almaty and then will turn their attention to a series of towns in their home country right until mid-December!

Here they are guests of Zhest Club, a somewhat hole-in-corner alternative rock venue. It has no cloakroom and it is all but impossible to buy a drink after 8pm owing to its packed nature.

Modest entrance.

On coming in from the warm October to hand in my ticket, I was surprised to discover that a band were already in full swing. The warm up was a chunky bespectacled chap and a willowy long-haired companion who churned out a very generic type of nu-metal. The crowd – a few hundred mostly ethnic Russians in baggy hoodies – responded with polite whoops and claps but here we had a reminder that in order to stand out something more is needed than musical competence and enthusiasm.

As nine struck the hour the band we had come to see obliged by getting onto the stage. They did so without the usual niceties of dry ice and light displays. Only the television screens on either side of the stage with their flickering images of the band’s name gave any sense of pomp and circumstance. In fact, going on appearances, STIGMATA could have been another support act. Compared to the Red Club this environment humbled them a little, yet perhaps provided them with a bit of authentic grit. They even seemed a tad unprepared, having to take time out to tune their instruments.

Their name promises Gothic theatricality, after all, but they are nothing much to look at. The lead vocalist Artyom Lotskikh could be the identikit Russian bloke: paunchy, bearded and pale-skinned. The two guitarists, Denis Kichenko and Taras Umansky, in caps and matching grey knee length shorts succeed in spicing up the visual aspect by favouring us with Saint Vitus dances as they play along.

Lotskikh is that rarest of animals: a lead singer who dislikes being the centre of attention to the point where he makes his way to the back of the stage after each song to recover himself. It is Umansky who takes on the task of laying on the much-needed interactive content with merry banter between songs and lobbing water bottles at the eager moshers at the front.

Another idiosyncrasy is their practice of playing at low volume recordings of their better-known songs just a second before going on to play the live one. As they grind their way through `Krilya` and `Lyod` and `Ostan Nadeshov` a svelte female photographer distracts us by crouching in the wings trying to get shots of with a long lens camera.

Quiet pioneers?

As much as STIGMATA get bracketed alongside their Metalcore counterparts in the States such as Killswitch Engage and Trivium, Lotskikh’s songwriting seems distinct in its Russianess, with a strain of folk about it. It could almost be as if they were forging, without hue-and-cry, their own subgenre of `Slavic power ballads` or something of the sort.

The set, at an hour and a half, was shorter than most. This gave me time to mull things over. Taken as a whole this had been a lackluster set by a nevertheless likeable group. Also, you can say this of their sound: it stays with you. The ringing guitars and soaring voice remained my companion during the long walk home.

Main image: UK: In Contact With.

LATE APPOINTMENT WITH THE VAMPIRES.

A SCREENING OF `EMPIRE V` IN KAZAKHSTAN DEMONSTRATED THAT THE CONTROVERSIAL MOVIE LACKS THE IMPACT OF GINZBURG’S PREVIOUS ATTEMPT TO ADAPT A PELEVIN CLASSIC.

I caught my first sight of the marketing for Ampire V – EMPIRE V – at the beginning of last year in a cinema in Moscow in the form of a poster. The promised screening soon vanished and, a few months later, so did I.

Later I would discover the supposed rationale for the cancellation. There had been a dispute over the certification. EMPIRE V was submitted to the Ministry of Culture with an age rating of 16+. The men from the Ministry felt it should be higher.

To date this film has not been shown in any mainstream cinema in Russia, suffering the same fate as the lamented picture WE. The key presence in the film of one Miron Federov – AKA OXXYMIRON , the rapper who has protested the invasion of the Ukraine and has staged benefit concert on behalf of those affected – seems to give the lie to the official version of events.

Miron Federov, `foreign agent`: wooooh! He bites! [Youtube]

Neutral Kazakhstan, though, deemed this film fit to be projected onto the screens in Kazakh cinemas this September.

There seems an appropriate symbolism to the fact that the late screening in Kazakhstan came at around the same time as Russia released Svidetel (The Witness) which represents one of the first cinematic attempts to advocate for the Russian government’s side in the war.

Master’s return.

EMPIRE V constitutes a 114-minute-long (now) 18+ certificate urban fantasy which, as the Russian title hints at (if you reshuffle it), draws on the vampire trope. The film functions as a rendering of the eighth novel by the post-modernist Muscovite novelist Victor Pelevin.

Victor Ginzburg, 64, who could be called a `Russian David Lynch` directs. This Russian born American citizen already has form with the tortuous task of transforming Pelevin’s fevered mythologizing into something screen worthy. Ginzburg was behind the film Generation P the paranoiac Nineties based romp from eleven years back (which made enough of an impression on one dolt for him to name his blog after it).

Pavel Tabakov, a Moscow born 28-year-old (with just a hint of the young Malcolm McDowell about him) plays the lead role of the down-at-heal Everyman Ramon and Federov plays his mentor who ushers him into the ways of the vampire and a relative newcomer Taya Radenchko, 24, is Ramon’s fellow inductee who allures him so.

Ramon turned Rama [cybersport.metaratings.ru]

Other players include Vladimir Epifantsev, best known for his Rambo-like portrayal of an outlaw in the television series Flint (as well as for holding views critical of the Putin leadership) while the establishment insider Fyodor Bondarchuk puts in an odd, but not untypical, cameo also.

Fractals.

The texture of it all is a rich psychedelic odyssey. Many computer-generated visions of neural activity flash up before the viewer, as do fractal patterns. Meanwhile, the earthbound part of the events is staged in a series of opulent olde worlde interiors. It is all a bit Stephanie Meyers-meets- Thomas Pynchon and much of it would seem ridiculous were it not delivered with such deadpan earnestness.

Plucked from obscurity.

Roman (Tabakov), a one-time student of journalism, is living the life of dead-end cash in hand jobs before he sets his eyes on a promotional alert painted on the pavement promising special work.

Turning up to the address, he soon finds himself being spoken to by a masked menace (Epifantsev) and being informed that he is to be elevated into the realm of the creatures who really run the show. The man before him is about to die and must needs pass on his legacy. What ensues consists of the instruction of Ramon – now to be renamed Rama – into the dense protocols of the life of the vampires and how they hold sway over us muggles, who are but a dairy species.

Myths busted.

In the process, vampire mythology is lobbed sky high. For example, what small fangs they have play second place to a parasite in their mouths which they call `the tongue`. This can extract a small droplet of `red liquid` from the victim without them noticing and thus give the vampire access to their memories and knowledge.

They also imbibe the distilled essences of historical figures from Alexander Pushkin to Steve McQueen, the better to augment their capabilities.

Love is viewed as a form of combat and ownership of human society is achieved via a promotion of Glamour (consumerism) and Discourse (Empty chatter masquerading as discussion). They even fund vampire movies in order to install a false image of what they really are.

They do, however, transform into bats and this gives rise to the most memorable episodes in the film as Rama streaks over Moscow in scenes that could be a homage to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

However, throughout his initiation Rama struggles with his existing sense of humanity and loyalty to it. Also, he becomes entranced by an insouciant, Hermione Grainger like graduate vampire (Radenchko).

Unbitten.

That is the framework to EMPIRE V but it is all served up with Pelevin’s trademark idiosyncrasies: modern Moscow merged with ancient Babylon, narcotic trips, philosophical chit-chat, mirthless grotesqueness and a strutting amoral elite and an atmosphere of disassociation.

Here is my problem: the entire vampire trope in itself has never been one which worked for me. For one thing I have never found vampires to be credible life-forms and hence not frightening and the sexual symbolism with which they are associated strikes me as tiresome. As much as EMPIRE V is iconoclastic about vampires, including the sexual angle, and as much as one could call this `a vampire film for people who don’t like vampire films`, the shtick still seems dated and facetious (Pelevin’s novel is 1`7 years old, after all).

Ginzburg does at least steer clear of the antisemitism which can be tallied with this kind of allegory (not having read the source material I cannot say the same of Pelevin).

Russia’s loss.

The refusal to screen this film by the Russian authorities has resulted in the inevitable `Streisand effect`. The Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal premiered the film in the West at the end of last July, making it the most talked about Russian film right now.

Too many of the resulting reviews regurgitate the assumption that this film has been banished from the big screen in its homeland because it is a clear satire of the oligarchic elite.

In fact, there have been Russian films before which have tilted at the same moneyed strata and made it to the cinemas. Rather it is the name of Federov, a `foreign agent` with anti-war views that has led to this stringent push back. (Indeed, there exist not a few oligarchs who would pull Russia out of the conflict, given half the chance).

EMPIRE V recalls Bekmambetov’s Night Watch and Day Watch (2004 and 2007) more than it does Generation P. By comparison it seems like a paler descendant of that classic.

Lead image: Se7enews.