Bastards

Oleg Mavromatti, 2000, video 75 min

About the film, Oleg Mavromatti says:
Nikita Chrusjtjov said in the beginning of the 60s that he was going to abolish money, making it possible to show the last thief on TV. These social works were illustrated in the film The Last Thief. The main character, the last criminal, is freed, and comes out into a bright, communistic utopia, with no place for bourgeoisie economy or thievish instincts. He is shocked. What can one steal if everything is free? He feels totally left out of this society. The main character in Bastards, a young, borderline city dweller, feels the same way. He tries unsuccessfully to adapt to the modern Russian capitalist society’s dog-eat-dog world. It is not his game. The world around him lives according to rules dictated by black-market cash and Chechen wars. It is a cruel and unjust world where only hitmen armed with wads of dollars instead of brains can survive. For a young Russian, money is a concrete sign of power and violence, with nothing abstract or virtual about it. Even the new state ideology lives off of the bloody oil dollars. There is no longer any place for dreams in Russia. An anti-utopian era has arrived.

Oleg Mavromatti was born in 1965; he comes from the Russian radical art tradition. His work is characterised by a technical and formal will to experiment coupled with a love of film. The Bastards utilizes defects to emphasize the real embodiment of character and to confront the slick, spectacular effects that dominate mainstream film making. Today, Oleg lives in political exile in Bulgaria. He is currently working on a film that exposes a bloody, naked showdown in which real members of the Bulgarian art world are actors.

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