KINOZAL, video 22:00 min., 2010
The Circular Kinopanorama – Круговая кинопанорама – is a cinema in Moscow, which plays Krugorama: the film is projected on a circular screen with a horizontal 360° view. It was built in 1959 and projects films from eleven synched cameras onto eleven screens. The same year, the designers of the Yakovlev design bureau managed to develop a suspension device for shooting circular kinopanoramic films from a Yak-24 helicopter.
The theatre's repertoire consists of films shot in the Soviet years and presents the viewers with the Soviet Union in all its beauty and optimism. During the Soviet era, tourism inside the Union was very popular, cheap and was with free movement across borders. I filmed the screening of "ВОЗЬМИТЕ НАС С СОБОЙ, ТУРИСТЫ!" "Take us with you, tourists!” which was directed by I. Bessarabov in 1966. The narrator and two participants take us with them on a trip from Moscow to Kazakhstan and from Estonia to the Caucasus, Lake Baikal and the Black Sea. I was particularly amazed by the sequence filmed in Tallinn, showing a song and dance festival, itself a piece of Soviet choreography, which has been re-appropriated by the Estonian people. It is precisely within these song festivals that singing in the Estonian language finally led to the so-called “Singing Revolution” and independence from the Soviets.
My films deal with the aforementioned political intentions but my first emotion when I entered the place was that of being confronted by a purely cinematic experience: the few spectators there were sitting neatly on a little bench, I got a very cheap ticket in a run down booth and the performance started … simply magical! (Eleonore de Montesquiou)
Eleonore de Montesquiou
* 1970 in Paris. Lives and works in Tallin, Estland and in Berlin, Germany
Is a French-Estonian artist. Her work revolves around the articulation between private and official histories, personal and national identities. It tackles the intricacies and ambiguities of living in the margins, based on her personal experience of uprootedness. Eléonore primarily working with video, she tapes testimonies, creating prosthetic memories of repressed histories. In her documentary-informed works, her camera becomes the voice of these voiceless people. Her work is based on a documentary approach, translated in films, drawings and texts; it deals mainly with issues of integration/immigration/meaning of a nation in Estonia, giving voice to the Russian community. She participated in international festivals: 2016 Gaieté Lyrique, HKW Berlin; 2015 Opuzen Film Festival, Croatia; 2015 Internationale Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg; 2014 Rencontres Internationales, Paris-Berlin; 2013 BWPWAP, Transmediale 2013, Berlin, cur. Marcel Schwerin; 2013 NO festival, Ufa, Russia; 2012 Belo Horizonte International Film Festival, Brazil.
