“Fantasy, even when it’s rooted in practical details and doesn’t involve any metaphysical impossibilities, is the hardest genre to pull off, for the simple reason that life is anyhow interesting. A drama or a comedy that sticks close to experience has the intrinsic virtue of documentary—and, as with documentary itself, less is usually more. Modestly naturalistic dramas and comedies may, in their ordinary incarnations, fall short of the heights of cinematic achievement by lack of imagination and symbolic extravagance, but they also often offer an element of observation that surpasses, in breadth and depth, the filmmakers’ limited inspirations. On the other hand, fantasy, which is by definition extraordinary, requires an extraordinary sensibility to realize with any sense of substance. It requires a sense of style, as well as a sense of metaphor, a sense of abstraction, of the conjuring of life and the realization of solid ground through perfectly chosen touches.” (Richard Brody)

 

Pavel Klushantsev (1910-1999), the unsung master of special effects of the Soviet era, had a career which peeked about the same time as the space race between the US and URSS peeked, which, not by coincidence, happened at the peek of the Cold War. Before the Soviet Union managed to put the first living being into orbit (Laika, the dog), Klushantsev had already sent two cosmonauts space, in his movie “Road To The Stars.” And before the American set foot on the Moon, Klushantsev had already colonised Mars. Both in inventing filming technics and in their vision, Klushantsev’s films served as a hidden inspiration to many examples of famous or ambitious cinema, from Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” to Nolan’s “inception.” Simultaneously, as he was imagining further and further away worlds, deeper in space or in time, Klushantzev, confined in his country and it’s political regime, was projecting a territory out of his present.

 

During the seminar, the films of Klushantsev will be screened and commented, along with comparative fragments from films they inspired, in an attempt to clear the relation between “reality” and its representation on screen: there is always a subtle trade that an author has to make between his/her own „life experiences“ and the “vision of life” he/she concentrates in his work.

The seminar will be held in english.