The Stanislavsky Electric Theater remembered the death of the Russian underground and the death of film director Igor Aleinikov

Gleb Aleinikov presented films made together with his brother, made without a script

The Stanislavsky Electric Theater hosted an evening dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the death of film director and one of the creators of parallel cinema, Igor Aleinikov and his wife Vera, in a plane crash.

It began with the opening of the photo exhibition “Echo of the Underground” by Andrei Bezukladnikov, who for the first time saw his own works in an unusual format. Portraits of the writer Andrei Bitov, directors Igor and Gleb Aleinikov, necrorealist Evgeniy Yufit, artists Pavel Kaplevich and Timur Novikov, actor and musician Pyotr Mamonov were made in the late 1980s – the very beginning of the 1990s. Someone is no longer there. Someone is difficult to recognize.

“Still, size matters,” says Andrei Bezukladnikov. – This is my iconostasis, portraits of friends and acquaintances. Almost all of them were not made on purpose. At that time I was a keeper of time, and now I understand that I did not do it in vain.”

The artistic director of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, Boris Yukhananov, views the photo exhibition as a walk in time. There will be three of them. The current one is focused on the history of the underground. As well as a film screening dedicated to Igor and Vera Aleinikov.

“Igor is my brother. Vera is his wife. 30 years ago they died in a plane crash. Igor and I formed a creative duo and made films. You will see “Metastases” – our first film, where we acted as the Aleinikov brothers, although objectively Igor shot it practically without my participation. This is a collage work, parallel, independent cinema,” Gleb Aleinikov presents the program. It uses all sorts of rubbish – defective, discarded film, footage taken from the screen of an old TV. Superimposed on songs by Mark Bernes and the Bravo group, snippets of radio broadcasts, they create a strange picture of time. By the way, the portrait of Zhanna Aguzarova is also presented at the photo exhibition.

“The Love Story of Nikolai Berezkin” is the latest joint film of the Aleinikov brothers, reminiscent of a comic book and radio theater at the same time, based on the paintings of Oleg Golosiy. One of the artist’s works depicts an airplane on the runway. Knowing how it all ends, you watch the film as prophetic. When the Aleinikov brothers began filming, Golosy had already tragically died in 1993.

The film with the strange title “Ameriga,” shown that same evening, was filmed in 1990 in real America. Only a few years after Igor’s death in 1994, Gleb will complete the picture. Among those who voiced it was Boris Yukhananov.

“Verochka was so sick that all the doctors here said that we couldn’t cure you, Verochka,” Yukhananov retold the tragic story. – And then the first fake miracle happened. Igor is an incredible person in every sense. He found something that was impossible to find. These are healers from the Philippines who, with their hands, without surgery, can save a person from an illness, and do what other doctors cannot. Igor agreed with them on the exact day of the “operation”. The second miracle is that he found the money. Nobody had them at all in 1994. He bought a ticket for a new plane, and he and Verochka went to the Philippines. In the Kemerovo area, the pilot allowed his little son to take the controls, and everyone crashed. An ancient mystery came into play. Igor Aleinikov was the face of the Russian underground, whose history ended at the moment of his death. He will never appear in Russia again.”

“Ameriga” was filmed not only in America, but in Asia and Europe, where the intergalactic agents played by the Aleinikovs are engaged in professional activities. At the high-mountain skating rink Medeo in Kazakhstan, where the brothers visited at the invitation of the director of “Needle” Rashid Nugmanov and participated in a conference of film critics, they rented skates and filmed a fantastic scene. Then we went to Paris. There, in one of the galleries, their works were juxtaposed with stills from a film by Lars von Trier. The role of the Dutchman was played by musician Kamil Chalaev who lived in France. In May, his concert will take place at the Stanislavsky Electrotheater.

A spy story filmed without a script is pure madness, but so talented and free! The third part of “Ameriga” was made during a film tour of 15 US cities. As Gleb will say, it was an incredible journey for the Soviet guys. He was 24 years old, his brother was 28. Many did not believe that they were from the USSR. Now, looking at the screen, it’s hard to believe that such a movie could be made.