Crimean idyll of Noughties explored in new exhibition

In a new exhibition, Vladimir Mogilevskiy, best known for editing the award-winning film The Return (2003), explores the blissfulness of the Crimea in the early Noughties. Old Video, which opens at the Transatlantique Gallery today, is based on a film that Mogilevskiy made of his friends during this idyllic period of his life.

In an accompanying text to the exhibition, artist Pavel Pepperstein writes: “Together this time and this place constitute a chronotope of bliss. I can bear witness to this personally, as I lived at this time and in this place. In the film we see two girls having a joyous, carefree time by the sea.”

Ultimately, asks Pepperstein, “How and why do these territories of happiness appear and disappear?” He later adds: “And these territories appear and disappear, however sad it may be, in response to happy coincidences that are woven together from a multitude of global circumstances, beginning with climatic conditions and ending with the socio-political, socio-cultural, economic and ecological aspects of existence.”

Mogilevsky edited The Return, director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first feature, which picked up a Golden Lion at Venice in 2003. The movie was seen as heralding the rise of a new generation of Russian filmmakers.