Antonina Medvedeva

The last film in Vidokle's trilogy on Cosmism is a meditation on the museum as the site of resurrection-a central idea for many Cosmist thinkers, scientists and avant-garde artists. Filmed at the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Zoological Museum, The Lenin Library, and the Museum of Revolution, the film looks at museological and archival techniques of collection, restoration and conservation as a means of the material restoration of life, following an essay penned by Nikolai Federov on this subject in the 1880s. The film follows a cast comprised of present-day followers of Federov, several actors, artists and a Pharaoh Hound that playfully enact a resurrection of a mummy, a close examination of Malevich's Black Square, Rodchenko's spatial constructions, taxidermied animals, artifacts of the Russian Revolution, skeletons, and mannequins in tableau vivant-like scenes, in order to create a contemporary visualization of the poetry implicit in Federov's writings.

Egor Melenin, known to his friends as Mel, lives in a small seaside town and is graduating from high school this spring. Mel cannot stand the routine and the tedium of his life much longer, and with his loyal friends Kisa and Hank, they start to look for excitement in their small seaside town that offers little to nothing for them. This all changes when a famous film director comes to town to shoot a commercial. Things take a turn when the director seduces Angela, an underage girl who Mel is in love with. Enraged, Mel challenges the director to a duel with a pair of antique pistols he and his friends had recently found. In this duel the Director is killed, but rather than revulsion, the group of teenagers find the thrill of the duel and the risk of death to be the antidote to their mundane lives. And so, ‘The Black Spring’ dueling club is formed – and with it the series asks, what will these teenagers be prepared to look down the barrel of a gun for?