MOSCOW (Russia)

Workshop:  24.06.2011 – 9.07.2011

Tutors: Maciej Drygas, Andrzej Musial, Mateusz Werner

Partners: Higher Courses of Screenwriters and Directors, Polish Institute in Moscow

The documentary workshop “Moscow from Dawn till Dusk” took place from June 24th to July 9th. The students of the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors and Russian Federation State Institute of Cinematography of  S. A. Gerasimov’s  name (WGIK) participated. The workshop was run by Maciej Drygas, Andrzej Musial, Mateusz Werner and Marek Skrzecz. Initially all participants attended a three-day pitching session during which 25 of the best projects were selected for production. After documentation, a technical team and equipment were put at the disposal of each student for one day. The rushes were viewed by participants and tutors. The professors helped students to make rough-cuts. Finally, several four-minute films were made. Each of them tells a story about a different aspect of big city life. The documentaries differ from each other in atmosphere, subject, narrative style and characters. We can watch private psychological portraits, pictures of the garrison, monitoring centre, the subway or at the police station. As well as the interiors of private flats (belonging to a modest pensioner, emigrants from Afghanistan or a well-off Moscow family) we can visit the belfry of an Orthodox Church, the disco “Retro” in the open air (very popular among single people) and a fashionable club for the wealthy. We can observe the work of a social worker, a guard on the subway, a teacher of Russian and journalists working on the Russian tabloid, “Moscow Komsomolec”. These varied and multicoloured elements create a tessellated portrait of the Russian capital and contemporary Moscow.