KINOZAL
view the film
Moscow, 2010
22 minutes
color
HDV, format: 16:9
original language: Russian, English subtitles
translation: Sergei Pogoreltsev
reviewing: Anna Canby Monk
Moscow Circular Kinopanorama
- Круговая кинопанорама -
The Circular Kinopanorama -Круговая кинопанорама- is a cinema in Moscow, which plays Krugorama: the film is projected on a circular screen with a horizontal 360° view.
It was built in 1959 and projects films from 11 synchronously working cameras onto 11 screens.
The same year, the designers of the Yakovlev design bureau managed to develop a suspension device for shooting circular kinopanoramic films from a Yak-24 helicopter.
The repertoire of the theatre consists of films shot in the Soviet years and takes the viewers through the whole optimistic and beautiful Union. In the Soviet Time, tourism inside the Union was very popular, cheap and without borders. The séance that I have filmed was "ВОЗЬМИТЕ НАС С СОБОЙ, ТУРИСТЫ!" "Take us with you, tourists!” A film directed in 1966 by I. Bessarabov. The narrator and two participants take us along from Moscow to Kazakhstan and from Estonia to the Caucasus, lake Baikal and the Black Sea. I was struck by the sequence filmed in Tallinn: the song and dance festival, a true Soviet choreography, which has been re-appropriated by the Estonian people. It is precisely within these song festivals that singing in Estonian language finally led to the so-called “Singing Revolution” and independence of the Soviets.
My films deals inevitably with the political intentions here mentioned but my first emotion when I entered was that of a pure cinema experience: the few spectators were sitting nicely on a little bench, I got a very cheap ticket in a run down booth and the séance started… magical!