Timur Novikov

Timur Novikov: Zero Object positions the late artist Timur Novikov as protagonist in this exploration of underground art from St Petersburg. As well as providing a historical overview of the 1980s-1990s, the film features iconic figures in St Petersburg’s underground scene: cult rocker Victor Tsoi, and artists Georgy Guryanov, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe and Sergey ‘Africa’ Bugaev, among others. From beginning to end, it’s a manifesto for personal and artistic freedom in a forbidding political climate.

1991 the Soviet Union disappeared with the collapse of the country, some DJs turn towards the techno music and LSD, the capital starts to beat with a very different rthym. The directorOlga Darfy remembers her city Moscow, her youth and everyhting she lived during her 20s. Her friend Vanya Salmaksov one of the creator of the parties called GAGARIN PARTIES disappeared in 1998. The director decides then to tell about this dizzying time from fragments of experiencess interviewes, archives and memories asking herself and the people she meets in this journey: where is Vania? Where are all this intense emotions, the excitation, the romanticism? Where this time has gone?

The plot of the famous painting, where a schoolboy receives severe punishment from his father.

Based on the play by Alexander Griboyedov.

The beginning of the 20th century. The recklessness of fanatics is pushing humanity towards the abyss. A revolution begins in Russia. Crazy Dr. Farkus induces an orgasm of inanimate matter. White Moroccan dwarfs are becoming active. A second Sun appears in the sky. In this difficult environment, captains selflessly confront the forces of chaos, maintaining the cosmic balance of history.

Opening of the Exhibition Renaissance and Resistance. State Russian Museum, Marble Palace, St.Petersburg, June 1994

"Three Interviews." This is from my archives, a TV shoot with Dima Frolov, 1994. Part one: my interview with Vlad for St. Petersburg TV. This interview is listed first because it's being published online for the first time. Part two: Vlad interviews Viktor Tuzov, and part three: Vlad interviews Timur Novikov (we filmed these two interviews for Tatyana Didenko's program "Silence 9"). I've already published the last two interviews online, but I decided to combine all three now—for friends, a chance to mentally transport myself back to those wonderful times when it seemed nothing could foreshadow disaster (at that point, Viktor was already terminally ill, but it was perceived as something extraordinary—an accident, an evil fate, the fate of one man).

A negligent student of the Academy of Fine Arts is late for a drawing lesson and instead of an analytical drawing of a plaster Venus, he hastily "paints" a red square, after which he is subjected to a demonstrative flogging by the professor.

A young musician falls for a mobster's young mistress.

The film is based on the concert of "Pop Mechanics" under the direction of Sergey Kuryokhin.

Documentary — featuring both interviews and live footage — about underground rock music in Russia, during the last years of the Perestroika.