TIMEKEEPER essay film / 2023
The writer and director Kristina Paustian is preoccupied with the idea of making a film about the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, who died over 100 years ago.
SYNOPSIS
Velimir Khlebnikov was one of the biggest pacifists in early 20th century Russia, a futurist poet and mathematician, who believed it was possible to predict future wars. Immersed in the process of making a fiction film about him, the author of the film loses sleep, and at some point the project seems to come to a dead end. In order to establish a connection to Khlebnikov, she starts writing letters to him, in which she describes various scenes from the film that does not exist.
" I did not sleep for what feels like eternity. One of the side effects of insomnia is: the past merges with the present, and the future seems empty. I go to bed in one place and in the morning I find myself on the other end of the world, in different places: Italy, Russia, Sahara, Kalmykia. It was here for the first time I learned the name of Velimir Khlebnikov..."
© Kristina Paustian, Voices Films
Format: 2K, color
Length: 73 min
Language: English, Russian
A production of Voices Films
in co-production with Kinokult, Mimesis, Revolver
Producers
Margarita Amineva-Jester
Co-Producers
Tamara Bogdanova, Yanna Buryak, Paolo Maria Spina, Darya Susak
Script, editing, executive production
Kristina Paustian
Director of Photography
Sarah Yona Zweig
Kristina Paustian
Yuri Tokarev
Music by
Oren Ambarchi
Founded by
The Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Elsa-Neumann-Stipend, Literarisches Colloquium Berlin (LCB) and the Robert Bosch Foundation
Technical Support
ARRI, SUD SOUND STUDIO ROME
Realised at
The Künstlerhaus Lukas, Urbane Künste Ruhr in Germany
Production Countries
Germany, Russia, Italy