The Head

In its surrealist subject, the uncompromising approach towards it and the absurdity of the whole story, this film is reminiscent of the Russian avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s. It has done well with alternative audiences in Russia and has earned awards in the alternative festival circuit. The story focuses around a bandit's morale and the collision with a mystic heritage, represented by a bodiless head. The head, personifying the immobile and degraded communist past, develops a complex relationship (both morally and psychologically) with its master, a bandit of the new generation. The film's plot consists of a series of ordeals and trials, foretold or prompted by the head. Svetlana Baskova's film develops the international language of alternative cinema. She is one of the most active artists consistently working within this framework, regardless of the dominating official culture. The conclusion of the film is uncompromising: society has ended up trapped in a 'new medieval age' and probably cannot break free. So the New Russian becomes a cynical priest, and slaughters the head, the emblem of the film, thus burning the symbolic bridges to his Soviet past. The Head is less radical and cruel than Green Elephant, but filled with the same provocative motifs. The work of Baskova is a picture of full social awareness and sharp, critical avant-garde. (AP)