PIEF Film Studio

A fat middle-aged man in German officer's uniform gets off a train somewhere in Russia in winter. He is a doctor who has just been called up we learn eventually. This is the end of the line- the Germans are about to retreat. He goes to a hospital which is being evacuated and is thrown out. Kicked out he wanders with another conscript- a failed actor turned postman. The postman is deafened by a shell explosion. They meet their Russian equivalents, others as bad at killing as they are, while other Russians and Germans kill one another around them.

Loosely based on tales by E. T. A. Hoffman. In a wonderland inhabited by fiery salamanders and winged spirits, good fights evil in search of a life-giving talisman whose finder will rule the world.

Irina Evteeva’s debut quickly became a kind of manifesto for the one-room experimental studio: it defines classification by interweaving animation, appropriated footage, feature and documentary to form a unique whole, a film that rushes backwards into the future, thereby re-inventing Futurism. Mayakovskiy is the star; his occasional presence holds together a film driven by the sound, the beat, of his poetry. Evteeva develops a dramatic structure of flaring, fading, being from light: violin strings become rays, quivering dull yellow spots, pictures. The plot assails the material from which it derives energy from material. History, growling and roaring, finds its form.