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Music, Canvas, Oil...

Synopsis: 

Screenplay, direction, art direction, production design, author of the paintings, video and audio montage: Sergey POPOLSIN

Composition and presentation: Evgeny MASLOBOYEV
Camera: Rosmarie SPITZER and Aleksandr VOROBYOV (reminiscences)

Production: Heim-Filmstudio ‘P.S.’
Countries: Austria, Russia
Languages: English, French, German, Russian
Year: 2018
Duration: 58:01 minutes

In 2004 the totally blind painter Sergey Popolsin and the musician Evgeny Masloboyev were working on a joint project provisionally entitled 'Colour in Sound'. At the time Evgeny created more than two dozen musical compositions to paintings by Sergey. Although this painting-and-music project was never ultimately realized, the music was preserved.
In 2015 Sergey had the idea of filming these tone poems. Having secured Evgeny’s consent to using his compositions in his auteur movie, Sergey set to work together with his wife Rosmarie Spitzer as the camera operator. By september 2018 the film MUSIC, CANVAS, OIL… had been completed.

The compositional principle of the film is inseparably bound up with its music, right down to the level of the individual episodes. Taking the total number of the pieces of music into account, the whole film could also be divided into twenty discrete, self-contained short films, each with its own subject – that is, the painting it focuses on.

As the author and performer of the whole video project, Sergey states: ‘I should not be identified one-to-one with the figure of the artist in the film. Although we resemble each other physically, and although all the paintings are mine, I have merely attempted as a painter to answer in metaphorical terms, without words, the question put by visitors to the exhibition – “How are the paintings made?” – and not to talk about myself.’

In terms of their content, all these short films form a linked chain: painting en plein air, memories, strolls in a city, visiting a jazz club and making an exhibition. The film concludes with a metaphorical clip: a blind man stumbles across a stony sun-baked desert, without realizing that there is a wall in front of him. This metaphor is perhaps too literal, but the unspoken thought behind it speaks not of the burden of blindness, but of an artist who sees his own world and pays no heed to reality.

Runtime: 
00:58:01
Information for the Audience: 

Directors: Sergey POPOLSIN
Writers: Sergey POPOLSIN
Producers: Sergey POPOLSIN
Key cast: Ylvie BREHMER, 22 Paintings (Oil, Canvas), Sergey POPOLSIN

Information for theatres: 

Student project: No
Completion date: 2018-09-30
Shooting format: Digital
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Film color: Color
First-time filmmaker: Yes

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