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- You are here: Home > CITIZENS OF THE COSMOS
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Online -
Saturday, November 28, 2020 - 19:00
Written by:
Anton Vidokle
Cast:
Rie Sakai, Akiyoshi Nita, Takaaki Negi
Cinematography:
Ayman Nahle
Editing:
Adam Khalil, Meggie Schneider
Sound:
Eli Cohn
Music:
Alva Noto
Producer:
Koichiro Osaka, Mariko Mikami, Lyuba Knorozok
Production:
Asakusa (Tokio, Japan), Mariko Mikami (Tokio, Japan), Lyuba Knorozok (Kiew, Ukraine)
CITIZENS OF THE COSMOS is based on the manifesto of Biocosmism, written by Alexander Svyatogor in 1922. Shot on locations in Tokyo and Kyiv, in collaboration with a group of amateur actors, volunteers, and extras, the film presents an imagined community voicing the historical desires of Russian Cosmism – immortality, resurrection of the dead, and interplanetarism – all set in everyday life in contemporary Japan. Using urban shrines, cemeteries, a crematorium, tatami rooms, a bamboo forest, an industrial gas plant, and city streets as an open air stage, the film gradually narrates the text of the biocosmist manifesto while presenting a sequence of dream-like tableaus, featuring rejuvenation through blood transfusion, funerary processions and demonstrations, the Danse Macabre, the cremation bone picking ceremony (骨上げ), attempts to communicate with the dead using stethoscopes, and a theremin orchestra recital, among other scenes. Set to an original music score composed by Alva Noto, CITIZENS OF THE COSMOS is an experiment in defamiliarization: a speculative test of the universality implicit in Cosmism’s premise when projected outside of the sphere of Russian language, geography, tradition, and culture.
Director:
ANTON VIDOKLE, born in 1965 in Moscow, Russia, is an artist and editor of e-flux journal. He lives in New York and Berlin. His work has been exhibited internationally at museums, art institutions, and biennials and screened at film festivals. His filmography includes SALTO DE AGUA (2002), NUEVO (2003), GUIDING LIGHT (2010), NEW YORK CONVERSATIONS (2010), TWO SUNS (2012), 2084: A SCIENCE FICTION SHOW/EPISODE 1 (2014), THIS IS COSMOS (2014), A MUSEUM OF IMMORTALITY (2015), THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION WAS CAUSED BY THE SUN (2015). IMMORTALITY FOR ALL: A FILM TRILOGY ON RUSSIAN COSMISM, (2017). A I O U (2019), and CITIZENS OF THE COSMOS (2019)
Festivals, awards:
Berlinale Forum Expanded 2020
“Filmed in Kiev and Tokyo, the film quite physically connects Eastern and Western philosophical traditions of Cosmism. The fantastical quality of the film is channeled through elaborate choreographed movements, sound, and interactions between humans and their surroundings (or objects). Some of the key tenets of Cosmism, notably its approach to death and reconnecting with deceased ancestors, are luminously and even playfully performed, as in a scene in which a few people listen to tombstones in a cemetery with stethoscopes. One of the particularly memorable final scenes depicts a Japanese funeral bone-picking ceremony taking place inside the Soviet-era Kiev Crematorium. The eerie, slightly orchestrated actions of the group of bone-pickers embody deeply human sensibilities that undergird traditions and ideals, which resonate beyond borders and cultures. Although the film is steeped in the aura of Russian Cosmism, its sensitive exploration of the movement’s wider impact opens up space for imagination, interpretation and reinterpretation.” (Henrt Heng Lu, ArtAsiaPacific)