Chas Zhyttya Objecta V Kadri

“"Choosing photography as material and memory as guide, we inevitably find ourselves in a labyrinth, one our own memory and that of others produces” warns Alexandr Balagura. And he adds: “seeking to escape this labyrinth, we become material in our own rights”. The warning is clear: the film claims responsibility for its winding nature. Nothing here is taken for granted: neither images, nor their far-reaching provenance. In a continual back and forth between theoretical meditation and dazzling visual intensity, between sensuality and mise-en-abyme, between the film and its exacting poetic art, Balagura takes us for a stroll, not because he has a penchant for sophistication, but because of a willingness to never loose anything as an image passes through. Thus in a slightly slowed, luxurious celebration, we are invited to meet up with an angel at sumptuous odds and ends, Dante, Brejnev, a Viennese scholar, the filmmaker in person along with his collaborators, Muybridge’s sequences, the photograph of a sleepy youth in a Russian market. But while this labyrinth is woven with images, it is not merely a question of contemplation, creative act, or a film in the process of thinking and making itself. Recent History of the ex-Soviet Union progressively springs up like a continual bass, which, little by little, swells, affirms and offers itself up as Ariadne’s thread.
(Jean-Pierre Rehm & Nicolas Féodoroff, FIDMarseille 2013)