Picturing Emotion

A unique new festival at the Erarta Museum explores the dynamic relationship between painting and cinema.

By Tatyana Sochiva

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: March 20, 2013 (Issue # 1751)

JEANOT CORTES Film and painting come together in unexpected ways at Erarta Museum.

Anew film festival that opened last week at the city’s Erarta Museum and Gallery of Contemporary Art is aiming to draw audiences’ attention to what is generally considered to be cinema’s ancestral art form — painting.

The first E(rarta)Motion Pictures festival, which opened March 15, is dedicated to short films about painting and features work by filmmakers from Russia and abroad.

The organizers of the festival, which is possibly the first of its kind, hope to boost public interest in painting and popularize the fusion of different art genres and interaction between art forms.

“Now it’s hard to say where the idea for the festival came from,” said Denis Rubin, Erarta’s director of programming.

“We have a very active program that is associated not only with painting, but also with the other arts. Many concerts, performances and film screenings take place at the Erarta Museum,” he said.

“In addition we also create our own projects and festivals. At present, the idea for the festival seems perfectly obvious. The museum has a large collec collection of paintings; therefore it’s only fitting that we should create a festival devoted to the subject. And the fact that Erarta is an international project [with branches in New York, London, Zurich and Hong Kong] has affected our desire to position ourselves on the world stage and attract foreigners,” he said.

As a result, both Russian and foreign short films by veteran filmmakers and newcomers alike will be presented at the festival. Nearly 200 films about artists, paintings and galleries were submitted to the festival’s selectio committee, which watched them all and prepared the long-list of 48 films to be submitted to the public.

“Just like contemporary painting, the films are all very different. On the one hand, the world of contemporary painting requires new techniques; on the other, it also employs the traditions of the past. Thus we have films about modern artists and their outrageous works as well as about traditional painters,” Rubin said.

“The documentary film category contains more or less similar works. As a rule, these are the films that tell the story of a specific artist. Fictional films offer more examples of experimentation. There are even some films that are difficult to classify,” he added.

The festival jury will select 20 works from the long-list that will then compete for prizes in two categories: documentary short films and fictional short films. It is possible that a third category will be created for animated shorts, but for the present they are included within the fictional film category.

The awards themselves take the form of miniature replicas of the sculptures “Era” and “Arta,” the originals of which stand near the entrance to the museum. Both the originals and the copies were created by St. Petersburg artist Dmitry Zhukov.

The members of the festival jury include such important cultural figures as Alexander Sokurov, who won the Golden Lion at the 68th Venice Film Festival for his film “Russian Ark”; Alexander Zagoskin, who was awarded the prestigious Golden Eagle by Russia’s Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for best art direction for the film “Poor, Poor Paul”; Sergei Yevtushenko, a famous composer for films and a founder of the State Hermitage Museum’s Music Academy; Carmen Gray, a film critic, arts journalist and active member of FIPRESCI, the international federation of film critics; and Ari Alexander Ergis Magnusson, an Icelandic artist and filmmaker nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize in 2005 for his film “Screaming Masterpiece.”

The jurors will not only select the winners, but will also take part in the non-juried parts of the program, which will consist of lectures and workshops as well as screenings of films about art.

Among those films scheduled to be shown are “Bridge over the Abyss” and films by the State Hermitage Museum’s director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, on the museum’s collections. The program also includes Magnusson’s “Screaming Masterpiece,” and “From the Planet Not the Island,” an Icelandic movie about painting.

Every evening after the screenings, contemporary electronic music artists such as Do-Re-Mi-Orchestra and Ilya Baramia will perform for festival participants and museum visitors alike.

The E(rarta) Motion Pictures festival runs through March 31 at the Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, 2, 29- aya Liniya, Vasilyevsky Island. Tel. 324 0809. M: Vasileostrovskaya. For a full program visit motionpictures.erarta.com