The director Anton Butakov, the cinematographer Artem Anisimov and the actress Alina Surina introduced the film Endless April participating in the Russian Premiere competition of 47th Moscow International Film Festival.
The plot focuses on Venya, an inconspicuous witness of the 20th century, he lives through revolutions, wars, the collapse of USSR, remaining in the history's shadow. His private world, which is his apartment filled with ghosts of the past where even love, family and losses dilute in the cyclicity of April, is a metaphor of life flowing past him and never changing.
Anton Butakov: "This film is a study of myself and, maybe, an attempt to look into my own future. The film is based on a wonderful play by Yaroslava Pulinovich. When I read it, I started looking for theater productions based on this play and it seemed to me that everyone made them in a wrong way, and that I would be able to do it right. So, at first, there was a performance in the Center of Contemporary Dramaturgy, a meta story about time and man. Two years ago we showed this performance in Moscow, but the only similarity between the film and the performance is that one director created both. In everything else, these two works are very different both physically and technically.
Alina Surina: "It's good that we have both the performance and the film, as Anton was on this creative journey before shooting the film, he got the feel of his idea and understood how to transform this material into a film. The performance is different from the film and this is logical, but the film's benefit is that the staged production came before it, which helped find correct answers to questions much quicker than if the film had been made from scratch".
Artem Anisimov: "When I watched the performance, I decided to take a decision to shoot the film in one frame. As the whole action is in one place, it was important for us to make this presence feeling, and at VGIK they taught me that this is one of the best ways to show a person inside a situation. And we understood that it was important to make frames as long as possible".
The plot focuses on Venya, an inconspicuous witness of the 20th century, he lives through revolutions, wars, the collapse of USSR, remaining in the history's shadow. His private world, which is his apartment filled with ghosts of the past where even love, family and losses dilute in the cyclicity of April, is a metaphor of life flowing past him and never changing.
Anton Butakov: "This film is a study of myself and, maybe, an attempt to look into my own future. The film is based on a wonderful play by Yaroslava Pulinovich. When I read it, I started looking for theater productions based on this play and it seemed to me that everyone made them in a wrong way, and that I would be able to do it right. So, at first, there was a performance in the Center of Contemporary Dramaturgy, a meta story about time and man. Two years ago we showed this performance in Moscow, but the only similarity between the film and the performance is that one director created both. In everything else, these two works are very different both physically and technically.
Alina Surina: "It's good that we have both the performance and the film, as Anton was on this creative journey before shooting the film, he got the feel of his idea and understood how to transform this material into a film. The performance is different from the film and this is logical, but the film's benefit is that the staged production came before it, which helped find correct answers to questions much quicker than if the film had been made from scratch".
Artem Anisimov: "When I watched the performance, I decided to take a decision to shoot the film in one frame. As the whole action is in one place, it was important for us to make this presence feeling, and at VGIK they taught me that this is one of the best ways to show a person inside a situation. And we understood that it was important to make frames as long as possible".