APRIL

“The compulsion to buy kills people’s ability to be happy and sad, that is to say, their ability to live. Consumerism makes them petty bourgeois. The film was intentionally shot without dialogue. We invented a non-existent language, and that is what the characters use to curse each other in the second half of the film. There’s no need to cast about for a translation; it’s all clear in the first place. The film gathered dust on the shelf for over thirty years. And today, I recognize in this film (shot in 1962) young people, my friends as they were then, when we were all afraid of turning into Soviet petty bourgeois. Into slaves of affluence.”