Angels of Revolution

For Angels of Revolution, director Fedorchenko (Silent Souls, 2011) has taken his inspiration from the Kazym rebellion of 1933, when the Khanty people of western Siberia rose against forced Soviet collectivisation, which meant the end of their traditional way of life and spiritual customs. Fedorchenko uses this brutal incident to reflect on the inevitable collision of two completely opposite ideologies, but above all to reconstruct the Russian avant-garde and political agitprop art of the time using wonderful, stylised images.
Modernism and tradition (or city and taiga) simply do not mix, and Fedorchenko illustrates this using a mannered acting style inspired by the teachings of theatre director Meyerhold, a constructivist animated film, and references to Eisenstein and Malevich. For the Khanty, culture means shooting at sacks of water and worshipping cats, not listening to the electronic theremin or looking at supremacist paintings.