In The Dark

2004 / 35mm / 40min / Russia / Finland
Filmmaker : Sergey Dvortsevoy
Producers: Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kaarle Aho & Jane Balfour

Screen
03/26 21:30 1 hall

A documentary film -directed by one of the greatest young European directors -about an old blind man and his cat in the suburbs of Moscow, which is also an analogy for both Russian and Western contemporary culture.

He is an old man: 80 years old and he has lost his sight. He lives in a small flat with a white cat. The man wants to do something useful and he spends his days making woollen bags. The cat messes up his work and everyday is a continuous battle between the two of them.

But the cat -besides being an enemy -is also his only friend. The blind man listens through the window to the sounds of the Moscow streets and explains to the cat what is going on. He also goes out on to the streets -trying first to sell the bags and then to give them away for free. Nobody wants them -because everyone is carrying plastic bags.

The film is a symphony of an everyday in a Soviet style suburb of Moscow . It is slow like blind man's days are. Symbolically the blind man represents something old and traditional in Russia , and the outside world represents something modern which doesn't have any use for the old blind man. Thus the film is also a metaphor for Russia in change.

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Sergey Dvortsevoy
Sergey Dvortsevoy w as born in 1962 in Chimkent , Kazakhstan . He g raduated from the A viation C ollege in Ukraine in 1982 and then studied at the R adio Technical I nstitute in Novosibirsk , 1988 and attended a higher course for film direct ion and scriptwrit ing in 1992 . His major works include Paradise , Bread D ay , Highway, and In the Dark. Currently Sergey Dvortsevoy is starting a feature film project T ulpan .