Ilya Kabakov

Like the Kabakovs' evocative art, 'Ilya and Emilia KABAKOV: ENTER HERE' has the sweep of a Russian novel and the immediacy of a family drama. It probes art's ability to transcend oppression and exile. With extraordinary access, the film follows the Soviet-born international art luminaries, now U.S. citizens, to Putin's Moscow, as they come face to face with their catastrophic past in the dizzying present. For the first time, Ilya Kabakov has returned to the hometown where his art was once forbidden, to install seven magical walk-in installations with his wife and partner-in-art, Emilia. The action ranges from the high plains of Texas to a blighted neighborhood in the Ukraine and climaxes as a sea of flashbulbs illuminate the artists at an opening pronounced 'historic'.

Ilya Kabakov is considered one of the most important contemporary artists worldwide. Born and raised in the Ukraine in the period between Stalin and Gorbatschow he left the country in the 80s. In his Installations and his numerous paintings Kabakov creates a world of its own, which leaves the heaviness of socialist and post-socialist life far behind. The film links Ilya Kabakovs artistic spaces with insights into Russian everyday life, which itself sometimes appears like an installation by the artist.

Dina Vierny is a renowned French gallerist, art historian and the muse of sculptor Aristide Maillol. In the French art community, Dina Vierny was highly regarded for her refined taste and broad-mindedness. During the war years she participated in the Resistance movement. In the 1970s, it was she who exposed Soviet conceptual artists to the West. In the movie take part: Aristide Maillol's nephew Yvon Berta-Maillol, artists Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Vladimir Yankilevsky. Dina Vierny herself talks about her life.