September 8 | 7:00 PM | at the St. Petersburg School of New Cinema. The event is part of the open lecture series “What is Cinema Made of?” by the St. Petersburg and Moscow Schools of New Cinema.
The meeting will take place offline at the St. Petersburg School of New Cinema at the new address: St. Petersburg, 11th Line V.O., Building 66, Bldg. 2, Lit. B
Participation is free. Advance registration is required. Space is limited.
As part of the recruitment process for the Experimental Film Laboratory of the St. Petersburg School of New Cinema, we will be screening films by the laboratory’s faculty—works that explore the possibilities of image, sound, editing, and other means of expression in cinematic language.
The program includes films by Gevorg Galstyan, Alexandra Karelina, Maria Nikiforova, and Lynne Sachs: from abstract work with form and image destruction to observations of nature, personal history, memory, and time.
This is an opportunity to get acquainted with the artistic practices of teachers and see how different strategies for working in experimental film can be.
The program will be presented by Gevorg Galstyan, curator of the Experimental Film Laboratory of the St. Petersburg School of Cinematography and founder of the St. Petersburg International Experimental Film Festival ( SPIEXFF ).
Program:
1. zero / point (2025), 4 min
Gevorg Galstyan
A geometric world unfolds from the void, where figures and gestures become a system of signs. These symbols form a map of the space in which man strives to find his place.
2. Last Words (2020), 8 min
by Alexander Karelin
The film’s protagonists are everyday objects from the 1950s to 1970s, captured on film. Their journey leads from the written to the erased. From the clear to the forgotten. Obsession with the past is their domain. Gradually, the images smooth out and blur into pure emotion. Nothing can be saved, nothing can be returned to. This is a film in which the characters take the stage for the last time.
3. DVA (2023), 33 min
Alexandra Karelina
A state of emergency has been declared in Moscow, but no one knows the cause. The protagonist tries to find his missing dog and figure out what’s really going on.
He finds himself in a world where the dead and the living are inseparable, but the word “death” is strictly forbidden.
“Two” describes the invisible boundary between two states: the premonition of catastrophe and the actual experience of it. It also reflects Russian culture’s deep, ineradicable attraction to mysticism and the miraculous.
4. Rewards (2014), 5 min
Maria Nikiforova
A destructive physical and chemical process reveals the hidden energies of Boston’s forgotten green space. The resulting fragments and debris alternately recall graffiti, stained glass, natural decay, and the effects of heatstroke on a fatigued brain. A minimalist soundtrack, created in collaboration with Stefan Grabowski, explores how we sometimes “hear” what we see—and, conversely, “see” what we hear.
5. Projection (2024), 5 min
Gevorg Galstyan
The textbook sarcastic hit from “West Side Story” gradually begins to rot and disintegrate. Faces, crashes, and clangs increasingly seep onto the screen, until, finally, the screen is subjected to every conceivable form of image and sound corruption, from hydrolysis to pixelation. But the more unbearable the cacophony becomes, the more coherent it becomes.
After all, there is no hit more iconic than the last big bang.
intermission
6. Ward’s Pond (2013), 10 min
Maria Nikiforova
Annual observation of the pond.
7. Marzahn (2015-2023), 13 min
Maria Nikiforova
8. Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor (2018), 8 min
Lynne Sachs
From 2015 to 2017, Lynne Sachs met with Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Gunvor Nelson—three multifaceted artists who have embraced the moving image throughout their lives. From Carolee’s 18th-century home in the woods of upstate New York to Barbara’s studio in the West Village and her home village of Gunvor, Sweden, Lynne photographed each of them in the places where they felt most confident and inspired.
9. Maya at 24 (2021), 4 min
Lynne Sachs
Lynne films her daughter Maya on black-and-white 16mm film at the ages of 6, 16, and 24. Each time, Maya runs around her mother in a circle—clockwise, as if moving forward in the same direction as time itself. Aware of the strange, simultaneous timescape that only cinema can convey, we watch Maya in motion at each of these ages.
Program duration: 90 min