6.June
2002
Movie&video
Killed by lightning
[Marta Jung]
The premiere of the Yevgeniy Yufits film "Killed
by lightning" took place yesterday in Moscow Museum of cinema.
The action of the film is unfolding not in the real world, but in subconsciousness
of the heroine, professor of anthropology.
The woman-anthropologist researches roots of the human evolution. Psychic
childhood trauma, caused by the death of her father, the captain of
a submarine, in the W.W.II, periodically throws her out of balance.
Phantoms of the prehistorical past and father's violent death collide
in the scientist's subconsciousness and bring to life an unexpected
theory of human evolution.
Yevgeniy Yufit was born in 1961 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In the
early 1980s he began working as a painter and art photographer. In 1985
he set up the first independent film studio in Russia, Mzhalala Film,
which brought together artists, writers, directors and others sympathetic
to radical aesthetic experimentation. At this studio Yufit made a number
of films which have been shown at the world's major film festivals including
Montreal, Locarno, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Moscow. His film Papa, "Father
Frost Is Dead" was awarded the Grand Prix at the Rimini Film Festival
in Italy. Yufit's films and photographs have been shown in major exhibitions
of contemporary Russian art since 1985, at the State Russian Museum,
Saint Petersburg; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf;
Kunstverein, Hannover; The Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City; MOMA,
New York. Works by Yufit are to be found in museums, galleries and private
collections both in Russia and abroad.
