VOCAL PARALLELS

Cult director, painter and fashion designer Rustam Chamdamov’s “fi lm-concert” revives a genre vastly popular in the era of Stalin. His highly entertaining version offers a playfully surreal round of arias by Verdi, Puccini, Glinka and other composers, performed by former stars of Soviet opera in locations like an abandoned factory, or somewhere in the Kazakh steppes. These operatic fragments are presented by mistress of ceremonies Renata Litvinova, the diva of New Russian Film – a post-Soviet Venus in Furs who makes melancholy comments about the decline of imperial grandeur. The fi lm derives its magic from the ingenious interplay of light and colour, from absurd comedy and the extravagant costumes designed by the director himself.