Masha Godovannaya

A filmmaker and visual artist.

Born in Moscow in 1976, Masha studied music, literature and book publishing before leaving for the United States in 1995.

In New York Masha joined the Mecca of experimental cinema, the Anthology Film Archives. During several years, she devoted herself to programming film series in various cultural institutions and festivals, and in the meantime worked on her own movies. After living in New York for seven years, she returned to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2003 where she continues pursuing her artistic career and teaches film/video classes at the Department of Liberal Arts and Science (Smolny College) of St. Petersburg State University.

Masha’s films and visual works have been shown at many Shevchenko St. 22/2 Apt. 2 festivals, screenings and galleries. St. Petersburg, Russia, 199406 She holds MFA degree in Film/Video from Milton Avery m.ph.: + 7 911 936 1925 Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York, and MA in Sociology from European University in St.Petersburg, Russia. [email protected] [email protected] SHE. THE TITLE OF ARTIST total installation at the Museum of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg – video, audio, paintings, 2015

The feminist art-research is conducted by a St.Petersburg- based artist Masha Godovannaya and two curators – Yaroslav Volovod and Yana Mikhalina. The interdisciplinary project is based on the affinity group principle and touches upon several areas, such as: artistic research, sociology of art, visual sociology, art-history and curatorial research.

Apart from investigating the archives of the Academy of Fine Arts on the “female history” and addressing issues of the history of the Museum collection, the project “She. The Title of Artist” explores the role and the status of women in two institutions which form the Academy: the Repin Institute and the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts. The research results are presented as audio- and video-installations displayed in several museum rooms.

2015 Contemporary Art in Traditional Museum Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia TRANSMISSION (with Polina Zaslavskaya, Joulia Strauss, Olesya Turkina), interactive video-installation, 2014

For the project “Apartment Art as Domestic Resistance” of Manifesta-10 Public Program the group of artists organized a feminist film-kitchen: each participant of the event can try the soup, which will be freshly cooked in this kitchen, as well as “digest” the tough questions that the artists will throw at them - all this whilst simultaneously becoming part of the live kitchen filming which will be broadcast back into the room.

2014 Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg, Russia UNBREAKING NEWS

A series of short films produced as an instant reaction to the recent political situation in Russia. All films were made in a similar way: I took a news from the Internet, quickly re-edited it and brought it back online, providing easy access to my “corrected” video commentary.

I use images "seized" from official videos representing the performativity of Russian government and its representatives, and “correct” them. My methods are quite primitive but at the same time they are highly effective in the subversive act of deconstructing the official text and visual language of Russian “elites”.

A FEAST IN TIME OF PLAGUE video, 13 min., color, sound, 2014

On March 18, 2014 President Putin gave a speech to both chambers of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. He declared the Crimea as a part of the Russian Federation.

He said: “Esteemed friends, we have gathered here today because of an issue that is of vital importance, of historical significance for us all. On March 17, a referendum took place in the Crimea; it was held in full compliance with democratic procedures and the norms of international law. Voter turnout was more than 82 %. More than 96 % voted for reunification with Russia. The figures are extremely compelling.” He gave the speech. The war continues. The plague have started. https://vimeo.com/91914574 THE WOMAN TO BE MARRIED OFF video, 4 min., sound, 2014

One question and one answer. The journalist: Vladimir Vladimirovich, we’ve been talking for more than three hours about politics. But high politics is not the only interest of our viewers. And female viewers particularly! One of them just asked: When will the country see the first lady? Putin: You know, at first I have to marry off my ex-wife, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, and then I will think about myself. In one sentence Putin sets off a conservative notion towards women’s rights for the whole nation. https://vimeo.com/93739080

BLESSING video, 7 min., sound, 2014

On April 14, 2014 Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a right-wing politician, publicly attacked two female journalists simply because one of them asked about the sanctions against Ukraine. He ordered to his guards “rape” and “kiss her hard” regardless of her pregnancy and threatened another one with unemployment when she defended her colleague. None of male journalists stood behind the women and tried to stop the high-ranked attacker and his followers.

https://vimeo.com/109417216 NON-TRADITIONAL video, 6 min., color, sound, 2013

On June 11, 2013 the State Duma quickly accepted a bill "for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values" which also known in English-language media as the gay propaganda law or the anti-gay law. This moment was caught on Russian news and “corrected”.

2014 Baltic Biennial of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia L’Alternativa 2014, 21st Barcelona Independent Film Festival, Spain https://vimeo.com/68158493 Russian Tradition of Art Resistance, Boden Art Center, Sweden Avant 2014 - Found and Excavated, Karlstad, Sweden THE ELUSIVE HORIZON 16 mm on video, performance, 12 min., silent, 2013/2014

Using multiple mobile projectors, the urban environment of Liteiny Prospect in St. Petersburg will be embedded with foreign visuals - fields, lakes, blooming gardens, the bayside. Filmed on discontinued Soviet film stock and hand-processed, the projected horizons twitch in front of the audience, reminding them of that long lost phenomenon of natural boundaries.

Participants in the performance will have mini-projectors loaded with the looped film. They are free to wander around as carriers of the quickly fading black and white images finding surfaces to project them - walls, sidewalks, trees...

2015 IX International Tarkovsky Film Festival “Mirror”, Ivanovo-Yurievic, Russia 2013 ArtDeboshir, St. Petersburg, Russia Art Prospect: Public Art Festival in St.Petersburg, Russia https://vimeo.com/90450526 FEMINIST TEXTS: “KING KONG THEORY” VIRGINIE DESPENTES video-installation, 3 h. 19 min., color, sound, 2015 This is the second project in a series devoted to feminist literary and critical legacy. The aim of the series is to promote feminist texts, to express the need for their understanding and comparison with existing visual narratives. In this installation, the text of Virginie Despentes is brought together with visual narrative of "King Kong" by Peter Jackson (2005).

The synthesis of Despentes’ text and transformed images of Jackson’s film allows me to expose traditional cinematic manipulation and representation of the female character. At the same time a different reading is created: as the only "carrier" of sound, the female character acquires a limit of her significance.

2014 Feminist (art) Criticism, Minsk, Belorussia https://vimeo.com/115380608 THE LOST REVOLUTION video, 16 min., color, sound, 2013 The "Lost Revolution" refers to a text “Sorties” by Helene Cixous, whose works push the boundaries of language and question narratives built on phallologocentrism. Is there a point of intersection between male and female? How are they defined and represented? What are the risks of limiting yourself to only “women” and only “men” categories? To some extent Cixous promotes the idea of bisexuality – a concept prior queer and variability of gender.

At the same time combined images of moving in opposite directions from each other two escalators and female voice reading Cixous’ text raises a question of feminism and its place in contemporary Russian society. The ideas voiced in 1975 are “facing” the closed space of the Moscow metro of 2013 with its patriarchal tradition of female representation. Is it possible to get out of this tunnel of representation? Is it possible to establish a different gender order and change inter-relations between different sexes? https://vimeo.com/68366632 Or the struggle continues? 2013 Experimental Moscow Gender School, Moscow Russia DISPLACED PERSONS (with Polina Zaslavskaya) performance, 50 min., 2014

Post-feminist agenda is often forced out from Russian public sphere of art or quickly absorbed by official power discourse. In our project "Displaced Persons" we appropriate a performative space and push the interprative frame introducing viewers to the social and post-feminist context.

Through audio performative gesture, we raise questions about economic and social hierarchies, alienated labor, artistic production, personal relationships, collective existance, power structures.

2015 Activist Art Festival "Father Frost VS Putin - III", Helsinki, Finland 2014 Feminist (art) Criticism, Minsk, Belorussia FETISH FRAMES #1 16mm on video, 4 min., music by Timothy Yufit, 2013

While doing a residency in Rotterdam in 2008, I shot and self-developed these images, a tourist’s dream of Holland – views of windmills: important technological and industrial achievements of the past, impractical but inseparable part of the city landscape nowadays.

The images were shot on outdated Soviet color film Svema, long time discontinued, and developed in chemistry of Fuji Film, which, once a big player on a film market, is moving towards video. They came out solarized and thus got this glamorous beauty of film media, unpredictable, chaotic and liberating.

One can marvel and adore them as well as fetishize them longing for the passing epoch of Celluloid Cinema and free-experimentation. Thus the each frame is turned info a fetish object – as once working windmills are now turned into a fetish of tourist attraction and memorabilia depicted on postcards, frozen into snapshots and stamped on ceramic tea pots holds.

2014 L’Alternativa 2014, 21st Barcelona Independent Film Festival, Spain https://vimeo.com/45177134 2013 Compulsively Constructed (Solo Show) Galleri Gro, Pietarsaari, Finland THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL PASSION video-performance for David Lang’s composition, 40 min., color & b/w, 2012

“I wanted to tell a story. A particular story — in fact, the story of The Little Match Girl by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The original is ostensibly for children, and it has that shocking combination of danger and morality that many famous children’s stories do. A poor young girl, whose father beats her, tries unsuccessfully to sell matches on the street, is ignored, and freezes to death. Through it all she somehow retains her Christian purity of spirit, but it is not a pretty story. <...>

There are many ways to tell this story. One could convincingly tell it as a story about faith or as an allegory about poverty. What has always interested me, however, is that Andersen tells this story as a kind of parable, drawing a religious and moral equivalency between the suffering of the poor girl and the suffering of Jesus. The girl suffers, is scorned by the crowd, dies, and is transfigured. I started wondering what secrets could be unlocked from this story if one took its Christian nature to its conclusion and unfolded it, as Christian composers have traditionally done in musical settings of the Passion of Jesus.<...> The word ‘’passion’’ comes from the Latin word for suffering. There is no Bach in my piece and there is no Jesus—rather the suffering of the Little Match Girl has been substituted for Jesus’s, elevating (I hope) her sorrow to a higher plane.” David Lang (from the program note) video commissioned by ProArte Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia

2012 Malyi Philharmonic Hall, St. Petersburg, Russia documentation: https://vimeo.com/65719593 INTERIOR video-installation, 40 min., color, sound by Dmitri Kakhovskiy, 2012

Interior is a multi-channel, audio-visual installation which explores the idea of multiple and infinite worlds within the human existence, whilst investigating the notion of hidden hospitality in a public space.

Footage of towerblock stairwells of the so-called ‘khrushchevkas’, austere concrete low-rise apartment buildings constructed during the Khrushchev era, forms the visual part of the installation. Alternating shots of closed doors, different in appearance, but identical in their functionality, hide communal spaces filled with life and dramas, hinting at the recent political events in Russia.

Ambient sounds, audio elements of found-footage, field recordings and fragments of dialogue draw us within the real or fictional realms behind each door. We remain in suspense compelled to link the concealed audio-spheres to the rhythms of the image.

2014 INTERSPACE Russian and British Contemporary Art, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia excerpt from the loop - https://vimeo.com/90450527 2012 Liverpool Biennial 2012, Liverpool, England documentation - https://vimeo.com/123576398 HUNGER video/ installation, 39 min., color, sound, 2011

In the installation three screens are placed near each other in a row. The uninterrupted process of breastfeeding captured on one of them almost defines the duration of the work while the other two screens intertwine with each other, to present several repeating narratives/conflicts and their possible developments/resolutions to an audience: the ambivalence of the maternal experience and feelings.

I explore my experience of the conflicts of motherhood and creativity, domesticity and self-reflection, empowerment of the camera gaze and its ownership, the process of fitting a picture (a child) into a landscape and visual passivity, displacement and fragmentation of time and space, maternal rituals, questions of femininity and female body and others.

The film’s images describe the very personal raw experience of motherhood almost taking a perverse pleasure in the graphic intimate portrayal of domesticity at the limits of tolerability and creating a record of pure labor and struggle.

2015 Maternity (Art) Leave, Art Camp, Romania Motherhood, Center of Visual Culture, Kiev, Ukraine Biowoman "Reproduction", Art-Muza Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia 2014 Complicated Labors, Sesnon Gallery, Santa Cruz, USA 2013 Compulsively Constructed (Solo Show) Galleri Gro, Pietarsaari, Finland Experimental Moscow Gender School, Moscow Russia 2012 Too Much Information Screening, Berlin, Germany New Maternalisms, FADO Performance Art Centre, Toronto, Canada excerpt from the video - https://vimeo.com/31131774 FORM.SIGNATURE.STAMP video installation, 2011

The project reflects a position of the author who critically reacts to a tumor-like growth of "new" Russian bureaucracy and return of militaristic and agitational pathos of the Soviet propaganda to the official visual culture. The installation consists of paper objects which construct three words - “form”, “signature”, “stamp" , and projected on / through them a video recording of the “May 9th” parade of 2011, filmed from a TV screen during a live broadcast from the Red Square.

2011 Bard MFA Show, UBS Gallery, Red Hook, New York 40 video, 10 min., color, sound, 2010

This film is the record of a traumatic reaction to the terrorist acts in the Moscow subway of March 29, 2010.

2014 The Other Capital, Contemporary Art Of St. Petersburg Today, The Museum of Moscow, Russia 2012 XXII International Film Festival Message to Man, St. Petersburg, Russia 14 Festival des Cinemas Differents et Experimentaux de Paris, France 2011 Urban Research on Film, Berlin, Germany 2010 10th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy

https://vimeo.com/24924105 2 HOME-MOVIES video, 9 min, color & b/w, sound, 2009

Nearly all of us have shot home movies: on film, on video tape, or using digital cameras built in to our mobile phones.

We have filmed our children, family celebrations, or holidays. Now, imagine how a home-movie might look like if it were shot in the Warsaw Ghetto at the beginning of the 1940s by a German worker on vacation...

“2 home-movies” invites a viewer to look again at historically charged material from a different perspective and to think about our desire to pick-up a camera to record disasters.

2012 Art Screen Fest, Orebro and Grythyttan, Sweden 2010 Homeward series, New York, USA Experiments in Cinema V5.1, Albuquerque, USA Collaborative Creativity, Collective Responsibility: The Potential of Art, Phillips Collection, Washington DC, USA https://vimeo.com/19086387 GIVE ME BACK THE PROPELLER video installation / video, 20 min., 2009

The film “Give me back the propeller” is an idiosyncratic personal reflection on a mythical image of masculinity in cinema and the clash between cinematic representation and real life. Endlessly repeated shots of airplanes and paratroopers taken from a film by Alexander Dovzhenko “Aerograd” (1935) accompanied by an absurd anthem to mythical masculine powers, these images and music had been hunting me for a long time until they found their counterpart – a documentary footage accidentally shot a few years ago. Combination of two different materials created a commentary on time, space, cinema and reality.

2014 VideoFocus Found Footage Exhibition, NCCA, Moscow, Russia Avant 2014 - Found and Excavated, Karlstad, Sweden https://vimeo.com/19087903 2011 exhibition “ArtIsArtIsArt”, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Russia 2010 Go Short International Film Festival, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Remakes, Reconstructions, and Interpretations Exhibition, Reinberger Galleries Project Room, Cleveland, USA 2009 Documentarist Film Festival, Istanbul, Turkey ALONG WITH THE PHOENIX 16mm film, 10 min., silent, 2008

The film is conceived as a free cinematic improvisation vaguely based on the myth of the Phoenix.

According to Ovid, Phoenix is “a bird, which renews itself, and reproduces from itself”. The myth narrates that after certain centuries (500 or 1461 years) the bird prepares a pyre for herself from twigs of fragrant trees, lights a fire there and is consumed by it. The following day in the ashes a small worm is found which is transmuted into a small bird on the next day, and on the third the bird has the form of the Phoenix again.

The film concentrates on a moment when the fire gives a birth to the bird: we will not see the actual creature but watch mythological flames transforming themselves into mystical ashes from which the new Phoenix would be born.

2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh, England 2008 Onion City Film Festival, Chicago, USA 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands

https://vimeo.com/19086838 OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR video, 61 min., 2007, music by Philip Corner, Robert Ashley, John Field, Ludwig Van Beethoven

This film is a personal dedication to New York, “a city symphony” to the place which means so much to me.

2011 Urban Research on Film, Berlin, Germany 2008 Director’s Lounge, Berlin, Germany 2007 L’Alternativa 2007 14th Barcelona Independent Film Festival, Spain 2006 Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, Iowa, USA GNAWED VANITY video, 8 min., color, sound, 2006/09, music by Gianluca Porcu aka Lu

The work consists of an investigation into the plastic qualities of video as a medium. It explores the processes of video capture and image creation, so different from those of film.

The video transforms the so-called ‘problems’ inherent in video technology (artifacts, distortions) into creative and unique expressions of the format and its limitations: a song of praise for the analog video medium.

The sound track was inspired by Schumann’s Op. 102, "Vanitas Vanitatum". Gianluca Porcu aka Lu, an Italian composer with whom I’ve been collaborating since 2005, divided Schumann’s original music into small molecular fragments of sound, which he then re-organized sequentially to create a new and vibrating electronic composition.

2007 Bodrum Film Festival, Bodrum Turkey https://vimeo.com/20386077 ANOTHER PLACE AND YET THE SAME 16 mm/16 mm on video, 38 min., b/w & color, music by Philip Corner & Bill Fontana, 2005

In 2000 I traveled to a lake between St. Petersburg and Moscow – Lake Seliger - which attracted me because of its unique nature. Using reality as a guide to lead me, I allowed my camera become an observer of this harmony and perfection, where humans are just one part of a bigger and more complex organism.

In my film I try to express my admiration of this unforgettable place, not by making an exactly truthful portrait of the lake but, rather, by creating a special world of nature with its own temporal, spatial and rhythmic connections, which don’t correspond to the accepted logic of developing phenomena.

With its impressionistic sequences, the film is more related to a dream than to a linear story. I wanted to develop a notion of recurrence, repetition and the continuous rebirth of natural phenomena, over which we as humans have no control over but have responsibility for its well-being.

2013 Compulsively Constructed (Solo Show) Galleri Gro, Pietarsaari, Finland 2008 Light Cone Scratch Projection, Paris, France 2006 Evolution Film Festival, Leed, England Asolo International Film Festival, Asolo, Italy 2005 5th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy https://vimeo.com/32965127 UNTITLED #1 super8 mm on video / video installation, 4 min., b/w, music by Gianluca Porcu aka LU, 2005

While walking along Nevskiy Prospect in St. Petersburg, Russia, I saw a young girl dancing this harsh, passionate and seductive dance.

2015 The Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia 2013 The Art Of Pop Video, FACT, Liverpool, England Video Capitale 2013, Besancon, France Compulsive Constructed (Solo Show) Galleri Gro, Pietarsaari, Finland 2011 L’Oeil sur les rues, Pavillon Paul-Delouvrier, Paris, France exhibition "The Art of Popvideo", Museum of Applied Arts, Cologne, Germany 2011 Images Contre Nature Film Festival, Marseilles, France L’Oeil sur les rues, Pavillon Paul-Delouvrier, Paris, France 2010 Videolab, Coimbra, Portugal Videoforms, Clermont-Ferrand, France the Tate Modern, London, England 2009 Vienna Independent Shorts, Vienna, Austria Dordrecht: Directors Lounge Selection, Dordrecht, the Netherlands Synoptic festival, Hungary 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands 53rd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany IndieLisboa 2007: 4th Festival of independent cinema, Lisbon, Portugal 2006 Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France 5th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy L’Alternativa 2006 13th Barcelona Independent Film Festival, Spain Asolo International Film Festival, Asolo, Italy 13th Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, USA Reel Venus Film Festival, New York, USA VIDEOEX Experimental Film & Video Festival, Zurich, Switzerland The BAC 40th International Film and Video Festival, Brooklyn, USA Director’s Lounge, Berlin, Germany Anthology Film Archives, New York, USA Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, Iowa, USA Aarhus Festival of Independent Arts, Aarhus Denmark https://vimeo.com/19086173 DROPS ON MARBLE video installation / video, 9 min., color, sound, 2003

This video is dedicated to Peterhof, the suburb of St. Petersburg where I used to live. It was commissioned for projection onto a wall of water at Berlin’s Literaturhouse for the exhibition Wasser-Stadt dedicated to 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Later I re-edited it for a theatrical projection using Kenneth Anger’s "Eaux d’Artifice" as my main source of inspiration.

2004 4th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy 2003 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil Wasser-Stadt, Literaturhouse, Berlin, Germany http://lightcone.org/en/film-4350-drops-on-marble MUZHCHINI 16 mm, 3 min., color, sound, 2002

"MUZHCHINI", when pronounced by emphasizing every letter, means "mature men" in Russian. It is a catchphrase of Yevgeniy Yufit, the father of the Russian necrorealist movement and the hero of the film. This word well describes his attitude towards and interest in specific elements of Russian masculinity, which have been among the several themes of his own films. The second protagonist is Yuri Zverlin, an artist from St. Petersburg and star of Yufit’s feature "Killed by Lightning"; the third, an anonymous "Lenfilm" filmmaker.

We were on a trip to the sacred monastery of lake Seliger; it all started inside its ecological pyramid, built without single nail supposedly maintaining the equilibrium of the region. It has no effect on us...

2006 La Rencontre Des Labos, Brussels, Belgium 2004 4th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy 2003 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil Intermittent Location, Museu do Chiado-Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon, Portugal

https://vimeo.com/32975572 THE FIRST ROUND DANCE 16 mm, 3 min., color, hand-painted, sound, 2001

While walking around my Brooklyn neighborhood, I noticed these children joyfully playing in the spring sunshine. By chance I had my 16mm camera with me - and was able to film them. They were not afraid of me and my presence didn’t bother them. Somehow I was invited into their game, so similar to the first Round Dance of spring.

2006 La Rencontre Des Labos, Brussels, Belgium FilmCartel Movie Night at Glasshouse, Brooklyn, USA 2002 46th London Film Festival, England Fresh Films at Anthology Film Archives, New York, USA 2001 Ocularis Film Center, New York, USA 20th Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Sweden http://lightcone.org/en/film-4357-the-first-round-dance THE MAGIC FERRY 16 mm, 0:30 min., b/w, hand-painted, silent, 2001

It could be an ordinary trip on the Staten Island ferry. But shot with single frames, with a few colors added and with just 30 seconds of running time, it becomes a trip on a magic ferry...

THE MAGIC FERRY-2 16 mm on video, 0:40 min., b/w, hand-painted, music by Gianluca Porcu aka LU, 2005

The original film was shot in 2001 and was silent. But in 2005 the sound was added – the music by LU who composed it especially for the film and this short movie has gotten its second life and 10 more seconds...

2004 4th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy 2003 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil 2001 Unleashed from the East, Mini-Cine, Shreveport, LA, USA

http://lightcone.org/en/film-4353-magic-ferry A FEW DRUNKARDS AT THE MARS BAR 16 mm, 0:50 min., color, sound, 2001

It was during one of our usual visits to this famous bar, or "Library" as we often call it. Jonas Mekas, Julias Ziz, August Varkalis, Moira Tierney and I were engaging in our daily activity -- "reading books", which lasted from dusk till dawn.

2006 La Rencontre Des Labos, Brussels, Belgium 2004 4th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy 2003 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil 2002 BMP Film Festival, New York, USA Cinematexas Film Festival, Austin, TX, USA 2001 Ocularis Film Center, New York, USA 8th Chicago Underground Film Festival, IL, USA

http://lightcone.org/en/film-4352-a-few-drunkards-at-the-mars- YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD SNAKE DOWN (with Moira Tierney) 16 mm, 4 min., color, hand-painted, sound, 2000

For a long time Saint Patrick has been touted as the redemptor of Pagan Ireland: the man who rid the country of its snake population. We felt it was time the snakes got their due - You Can’t Keep A Good Snake Down redresses this historical imbalance. The All-Star cast includes Maria Montez, Jackie Chan and an assortment of noted Irish and British politicians. Scenes of harem and combat are set to the score of a medieval tarantella, or spider dance. It’s all in the Eye of the Chameleon... 2010 II Vienal de Video Arte Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile 2009 Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago, Chile Hilltown New Music Festival, Westmeath, Ireland 2008 Le Polygone Etoile, Marseille, France Les Inattendus Film Festival, Lyon, France Spazio Arka Centro Culturale Polivalente, Sardinia TekFestival, Rome, Italy Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania 45 Festival del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro, Italy 2007 Exis Festival, Korea Non-Grata Film and Video Festival, Parnu, Estonia Feminism(s) Film Video Politics, University of Hartford, USA The Tank, Tribeca, New York Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France http://lightcone.org/en/film-4359-you-can-t-keep-a-good-snake-down Mostravideo, Itau Cultural Institute, Belo Horizonte & Belem, Brazil ON Film Festival, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia 2002 The State University of Art History, St. Petersburg, Russia Boxcar film and video series, Detroit, USA 4eme Festival des Cinemas Differents, Paris, France 2006 Center Pompidu, Paris, France L’Alternativa 2002 IX Independent Film Festival od Barcelona 2005 Anthology Film Archives, New York 2001 Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, New York, USA 2004 38th Brooklyn Art Council Film Festival, New York, USA Warsaw Center For Contemporary Art, Poland Goliath Art Center, New York, USA 45th London Film Festival, England 2003 Paris Cinema the Collectif Jeune Cinema, Paris, France 8th New York Underground Film Festival, USA Glaway Film Festival, Galway, Ireland 2000 Avant-Garde Alternatives, Museum Of Cinema & VGIK, Moscow; Museo de Arte y Diseio Contemporneo, Costa Rica "Spartak" movie-theatre, St. Petersburg; Dom Kino, Yekaterinburg, Russia Art-Action: Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, France-Germany Cinematexas Film Festival, Austin, TX, USA NEW YORK UNDERGOUND super8 mm on video, 7 min., b/w, music by Axel Dross, 1999

A poet once said: "Darkness is just a kind of light". They are always side by side, intertwining with each other; inseparable, indivisible, parts of our lives.

2011 Screening Room, Cologne, Germany 2004 4th Independent Film Show, Naples, Italy 2003 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil 1999 Brooklyn College Conservatory Of Music, New York, USA CURATORIAL PROJECTS 2015 Fake Movie Theater: a film retrospective of Marie Losier, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia 2014 A Feast in Time of Plague, Avant 2014 - Found and Excavated, Karlstad, Sweden; Words’ Order, St. Petersburg Resisting the Noise, Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg, Russia Out of Closure: video worlds of Marina Alekseeva, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Solus & Guests, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Emily Newman. New Cheluskins: Notes From the Ice, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Jonas Mekas: 365 Days, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia 2013 Peterstad: Constructing City Space, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Protest, or “video-is-deleted-because-of-improper-content”, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Stom Sogo. A Flaming Creature, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Exquisite Corpse: fragmented animation by Igor Tsvetkov, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia 2012 Beyond Light and Darkness: a show of young Russian artists, Loft Project ETAZHI, St. Petersburg, Russia Reverse Perspective: a show of young Russian video artists, Institute Pro Arte, St. Petersburg, Russia 2010 A Gaze From Within: a program of recent Russian sociopolitical films, E-M Arts / Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy, 2007 Field of Glass: a program of Russian experimental film and video, Avanto Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland Next Horizon: a program of Russian experimental film & video, “Now is the Winter” symposium, Ithaca, USA Tired Snow revised: four programs of Russian experimental film, video and animation, “Rodina” movie theater, St. Petersburg, Russia 2006 "An Eye-witness", a program of experimental film, video and animation, SKIF10, St. Petersburg, Russia 2005 Tired Snow (vol. III): a program of recent Russian film, video and animation, E-M Arts /Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy, “The Autumn #2”, St. Petersburg, Russia Tired Snow (vol. III bis): a program of recent Russian film, video and animation, “The Autumn #2”, St. Petersburg, Russia 2004 New Morning, E-M Arts/Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy 2003 Experimental Russian Films & Animation (11 programs), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sao Paulo, Brazil St. Petersburg Radicals: 1980-2002, Yale University 2002 Yevgenii Yufit and St. Petersburg Radicals of 80s-90s, Amsterdam Film Center 2001 Continuum... (the program of Recent American Videos), Media Forum of the XXIII Moscow Int. Film Festival, Russia; Transit_by.01 Film Festival, Minsk, Belarussia; “Kinoobservatoria”, St. Petersburg, Russia The Flow of Energy: Contemporary American Film and Video, 2nd Moscow Int. Youth Film Forum "Debut-Kinotavr", Russia; Transit_by.01 Film Festival, Minsk, Belarussia; The State University of Art History, St. Petersburg, Russia Russian Necrorealist Cinema: The Films of Yevgeniy Yufit, Russian Film Symposium, Pittsburgh, PA YevgeniyYufit: Small Retrospective, Anthology Film Archives, New York; OuterLimits Film Festival, New York Experimental Russian Film and Video (Vol. II), Anthology Film Archives, New York; University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; Balagan Film Center, Boston, MA New Voices of 90s: American Experimental Films, Anthology Film Archives, New York 2000 Urbi Et Orbi: A Program of New American Videos, Museum of S. Freud, St. Petersburg, Russia; St.Petersburg University of Culture, St. Petersburg, Russia traveling show: Avant-Garde Alternatives: An Evolution of American Experimental Film, Museum of Cinema & VGIK, Moscow, Movie theatre "Spartak", St. Petersburg, House of Cinema, Yekaterinburg, Russia Necrorealism: Yufit and... , Anthology Film Archives, New York; Robert Beck Memorial Cinema, New York 1999 Russians are coming...: Recent Russian Experimental Films (Vol.I), Anthology Film Archives, NY;University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; Cinematexas Film Festival, Austin, TX; Russian Film Symposium, Pittsburgh, PA; NY Film Festival of Russian Films ARTICLES/PUBLICATIONS

2015 “In An Attempt “to saw a horse” of Vivian Maier”. an article in “Seans” Film Magazine, St. Petersburg, Russia 2007 An introduction to the program “Field of Glass” at the catalog of Avanto Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland 2005 An Introduction to the catalog of 5th Independent Film Show, E-M Arts/Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy 2004 An Introduction to the catalog of 4th Independent Film Show, E-M Arts/Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy 2003 A Note, Intermittent Location, Museu do Chiado-Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea (the catalog article), Lisbon, Portugal 2001 – 2002 monthly film articles at “TV Panorama” (weekly magazine), St. Petersburg, Russia 2000 Report, Avant-Garde Alternatives: An Evolution Of American Experimental Film: Postscript to the exhibition (the program’s brochure), New York 1999 Russian Avant-Garde, Cinematexas Film Festival, the catalog article, Austin, TX

HONORS/GRANTS/RESIDENCIES

2013 EUNIC Fellowship, Liverpool, England 2012 Diploma at XXII International Film Festival Message to Man, St. Petersburg, Russia IDFA Academy, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Tokamak Residency, Helsinki, Finland 2009, 2010 Ottaway Student Exchange Fellowship, New York, USA 2008 “Artist in Residency” of 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands 2006 “Honored Teacher of the Year” of Smolny College Of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia 2002 BPM Film Festival Award, New York, USA 2000 Trust for Mutual Understanding Grant, New York, USA 1998 Liz Weis Family Scholarship, New York, USA 1997 Brooklyn College Foundation Grant, New York, USA

DISTRIBUTION

Light Cone, Paris, France www.lightcone.org The Collectif Jeune Cinema (CJC) Paris, France http://www.cjcinema.org Filmmakers’ Cooperative, New York, www.film-makerscoop.com Les Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, Paris, France, www.art-action.org