Bipedalism

Pryamokhozhdenie

Russia, Netherlands

2005

94 Min

Black and White

Russian

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

PROD Igor Kalyonov, Sergei Selyanov

SCR Yevgeny Yufit, Igor Khadikov

DP Dmitry Alekseev, Yevgeny Yufit

CAST Viktor Mikhaylov, Aleksandr Anikeyenko, Sergei Chernov, Yelena Sapozhinskaya, Aleksey Tarasov, Yury Zverlin

SOUND Vazha Bzikadze, Kirill Morozov

Synopsis

Bipedalism, or ‘two-footed walking’, is the story of a painter who grew up in an orphanage and only years later learns the circumstances of his father’s disappearance and death. Childhood memories bring the main character back to the past: he buys a house in the suburbs that used to belong to his family. In the basement, he finds his father’s archives and scientific research documents on the hybridization of human race with related biological species. Studying the archive material, he unexpectedly finds evidence of efforts to renew the experiments on the remaining hybrid population. The painter then becomes a researcher, and consequently a victim. The basic idea of his father’s research was to change, control and influence the process of human evolution – initially connected with eugenics theories of the period before World War II, and now being placed in a context of modern ‘biotechnological’ expectations by his former colleagues. The main character tries to recreate and realize his father’s heritage, who was forced to cooperate with state terror organizations, using the results of his secret research. In a tragic manner, this information turns into the main character’s reality, at first forcing him to reappraise his father’s values and later driving him to madness.

Director

Yevgeny Yufit

Evgenii Iufit (Yevgeny Yufit) was born in 1961 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In the early 1980s he began working as a painter and art photographer. In 1985 he set up the first independent film studio in Russia, MZHALALA FILM, which brought together artists, writers, directors and others sympathetic to radical aesthetic experimentation.

At this studio Iufit made a number of films which have been shown at the world’s major film festivals including Montreal, Locarno, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Moscow. His film, Daddy, Frost is Dead, was awarded the Grand Prix at the Rimini Film Festival in Italy. Iufit’s paintings and photographs have been shown in major exhibitions of contemporary Russian art since 1985, at the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstahalle, Dusseldorf; Kunstverein, Hanover, and The Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City. Works by Iufit are to be found in museums, galleries, and private collections both… read more