Retrospective of Vivian Ostrovsky: Program 2

USSA

Director: Vivian Ostrovsky
USA, 1985, 11', HDD, color
English with Turkish subtitles

USA + USSR= USSA. My film is about blurred boundaries, probably due to my own personal history. I was born in New York, to Russian and Czech parents, raised in Brazil and educated in France. As a result, the film is a cultural cocktail shot on super 8 in New York, Berlin, Milan and Paris. 

WORK AND PROGRESS

Director: Vivian Ostrovsky
USA, 1999, 10', HDD, color
English with Turkish subtitles 

A trip to Russia by two filmmakers, in 1990, ends up in a twin- screen projection using their super 8 footage mixed in with archival material and a sprinkling of the classics such as Vertov and Eisenstein. 

Nikita Kino

Director: Vivian Ostrovsky
USA, 2002, 40', HDD, B&W
English with Turkish subtitles 

In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered that his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn’t seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn’t leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for about 15 years. At the time I had my 8mm then a super 8 camera with which I filmed the family, our outings, picnics, markets and their homes...

I decided to use this material, which was not very interesting per se, by mixing it with Soviet found-footage of the same period (1960s, 1970s, 1980s). I used feature films, propaganda footage, newsreels, etc. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my reminiscences of the Cold War era.