A film by Milo Rau
Germany 2014, 86 min (Russian with English subtitles)
Concept and Direction: Milo Rau
Camera: Markus Tomsche
Sound: Jens Baudisch
Stage: Anton Lukas
Assistant Director: Yanina Kochtova
Editing: Lena Rem
Production: Arne Birkenstock
In cooperation with: Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar, Institute for the Performing Arts and Film / Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Konzert Theater Bern, Gessnerallee Zürich, Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, Memorial Russland, Sacharow-Zentrum Moskau, Wiener Festwochen, Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brüs-sel, Goethe-Institut Moskau, Fruitmarket Kultur und Medien GmbH.
Supported by funds from: Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien
In the summer of 2012, when the punk activists of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a penal colony for their performance in the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the world reacted with widespread protest rallies. Yet this was only the latest episode in a ten-year series of show trials of artists and dissidents, staged by Putin’s system to prevent any form of democratic change.
Rau thematises this issue by drawing on the techniques of political theatre: from March 1 to 3, 2013, a courtroom was set up at the Moscow Sakharov Center to provide a stage for a three-day show trial that pitted the different sides of the cultural war waged in Russia against each other. Yet the people on stage were no professional thespians but real-life actors: artists, politicians, church leaders, real lawyers and a real judge. A jury composed of seven Moscow citizens finally handed down their sentence an acquittal, albeit by a narrow margin, for the artists.
The 3-day-trial, stormed by the Russian authorities and by units of the Cossacks, led to an international scandal and a travel ban against the director Milo Rau. The film “The Moscow Trials” documents the project and illuminates the historical and political backgrounds.
www.international-institute.de
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