Aleksey Balabanov retrospective:
Of Freaks and Men / Про Уродов и Людей (1998)
Saturday, 15 Fabruary | 5:30 pm
The May Fair Hotel Theatre (map)
Tickets to be collected on the door. Please bring your PayPal confirmation with you.
Russia, 1998, comic drama, 97 min
Director: Alexei Balabanov
Cast: Sergey Makovetskiy, Dinara Drukarova, Anzhelika Nevolina
Differing vastly from the bruising realism of the Brother films is Of Freaks and Men (1998), this is an idiosyncratic take on the pioneers of film and photographic pornography in Saint Petersburg in the early 1900s. “Every director has only one good film. Mine is Of Freaks and Men’’, Balabanov told Esquire Magazine, expressing his own infatuation with this aesthetically stunning sepia film.
“Every director has only one good film. Mine is Of Freaks and Men’’, Balabanov told Esquire Magazine, expressing his own infatuation with this aesthetically stunning sepia film. This is an exceptional study of human curiosity and compromise with social moral etiquette in the face of blossoming early age of pornography. Of Freaks and Men bolsters Susan Sontag’s assessment that “to photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have”. Thus, the grim St. Petersburg society of the early 1900s is carved out between miscreants and sufferers; freaks and men. This masterpiece has won Balabanov two prestigious Nika Awards, including the Best Director award.
Book tickets:
Tickets to be collected on the door. Please bring your PayPal confirmation with you.