«Émigré», 2015
Duration: 30 min.
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
A narrative is impossible because it’s impossible to reflect on everything. The narrative will always grow bigger than the film. The film is limited by its frame and duration, but the narrative is not. The most important part of the story will always stay out of the film. Even if 'Émigré' film has a narrative, the author of the film wouldn’t want to know it. Using reality, 'Émigré' is creating its own fiction. Reality is the thing you will only notice when it’s absent. The film itself is an immigrant, as well as its author. The film, divorced from its native reality, is creating for itself a new one and falling for it. Émigré is searching for a synthetic genre, crossing the borders of video art and experimental cinema, mixing documentary and fiction scenes into a collage. At the same time, 'Émigré' is exploring the possibility of video as a form of literature. Inspired by literary traditions of emigrant diaries, this film is creating a visual diary, so transparent that a motion of memoirs could be seen through it. Following this logic, a certain synopsis is being created consisting of not only the film but of life itself. If there is a documentary part, it has a touch of paradox. If there is fiction, it’s so-referred to reality. The Characters tell us about their traumatic experience caused by reality. Such film couldn’t possibly have a script, such film is not to be shot, but to be found by its characters, and the author is only one of them. Such film couldn’t be made by actors and a director could be made by victims and witnesses. The plot is revealing itself both in content and in visuality. The stillness of photography, the cyclic recurrence of glitches, the surveillance motion of video art, and finally the cinematic imperative of empathy. 'Émigré' is emitting the sound of political silence, there is something to be said, but it’s better to keep silent over such things. There are words that wanted to be outspoken, but it’s not yet possible to pronounce them. However, despite the will of the film, the character’s statement is developing through the scenes and is to be outspoken. The more 'Émigré' resists the narrative, the more narrative persists and finally reveals itself.
«The Black And White», 2016
Duration: 30 min.
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
The Black And White film is an attempt to create a poetic document in the guise of an experimental film made to define the contours and contents of the surrounding reality. Deviations from the established norms of cinematic narrative give rise to a dialect. And whereas a trope in literature is a figure of speech, observation in the film is a figure of visualization. It is about comparing mutually opposed ideas in terms of forms and shapes. Keeping a watchful eye on the outlines, gradations, and the contrasting nature of things. Chasing their meanings and listening to the way they sound. Creating a poetic document in pursuit of a new genre amalgamating two contradictory disciplines – cinema and video. A message caught up in the middle, in transition from one meaning to another, in some kind of in-between condition. A premonition of possible meanings through the lens of relentless observations of reality. Reality is nothing more than white noise.
«Symposium», 2017
Duration: 30 min.
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
This film has no title in the general sense of the word, but still it is entitled. It has no actors, only characters. It has no narrative, but it follows sequence strictly. The film has no genre, it is neither a cinema, neither a video, it simply exists as a stream. A digital hommage to the era of celluloid.
«Danaé», 2018
Digital, HD
Duration: 30 min.
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
The original version of the «Danaé» has been destroyed by a computer virus. The current edition is an attempt to create a reconstruction. Characters are forced to outlast a certain regeneration. And actors to revisit the concept of the film. «Danaé Reborn». Inhabitants of the film are tortured by some fragmentary memories of their existence in the previous generation of «Danaé». The project reveals for the spectator a concept of hybrid cinema, synthesizing contrary methods. Combining in specific proportions fiction and reality, sequence and chaos, color images, and those black and white. A project that stands in between genres, in order to offer a viewer a role of an interactive participant. A storyline told by a non-narrative film, to emphasize the archetypical nature of the story. In contrast to a linear narration, «Danaé» is focused on a tension rising between characters, allows a close-up look at their inner state of mind. Images are only to create visual intertextuality, and to place there both character and a spectator. So both can rediscover their flickering identity on a basis on the ancient myth of Danaé, and on the grounds of a classic drama by Chekhov. The eternal exile becomes imminent for both Danaé and Ranevskaya.
«Chronique», 2020
Digital, 2K
Duration: 60 min.
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
Chronicles without a time. Storyline extracted from chaos. Characters of the film are entering a vague counter-reality. The environment is somehow generated from their own consciousness. Characters are transparent in a certain way, so we can follow their personal narrative through the very manner they appear, through the objects they are interfering with. Their motion is rapid as they are strangers in the sleepy and morbid nowhere. Layers of characters, urbanscapes, voices, and sounds. Utopia found and forgotten immediately. Outsiders running away from society, finding their shelter in the depth of the Anti-Terre. Chronique de l'Anti-Terre. La révolte du cinéma.
«Archive», 2021
Digital, 2K
Duration: 20 min.
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
The current reality is getting more and more static. The present is slowly moving towards oblivion. Characters of the "Archive" project are participants of an experiment. They are constantly trying to locate themself in time and space. Characters have to connect through certain points with upcoming and undetermined reality. An image is an attempt to search for a new reality. A text spoken is an attempt to reflect on the past. The message is something transparent, and it is hidden behind the lines. A spectator is a new author, and one needs some new tools to operate. In that transition, some points are doomed to be overlooked. Revisiting an archive is a way to find messages unrevealed. To unzip ourselves from the past.
«The Crisis of Spectacularity», 2024
Digital, 4K
Duration: 15'00
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
An empty scene is placed at the seaside. To act one should rethink the scene, and restore its emptiness. Mise en scène and mise en lumière are components for the image. The camera is just a tool to observe the obscurity of our days. The goal of the performance is to follow the current identity and spectacularity crisis.
A slow transition between the invisible present and the senseless future. Playing a game of games - spectacularity crisis is my opponent. A documentary camera can only transmit a message that was formulated or verbalised before the image was created. On the contrary, only a ritual, a theatrical game can reflect on a new situation that we are placed in. And to overcome the fear of a blank page.
«Les cendres de nos jours», 2024
Digital, 4K
Duration: 73 min
Director :Yasha Vetkin
DOP: Michael Gershtein
Urban nomads are constantly wandering through Mediterranean cities in times of permanent crises. A space is fragmenting, a time is cycled. A crisis of perception of such basics as timeline and spaceline. Defragmentation of reality. We have to follow events using different tools and different mindsets. To go through a period of turbulence. The film is a sequence of performances documented and mixed with a series of soundscapes - a journey through the dust of our days.