Plot synopsis

This documentary, presented in 1989 at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes, is devoted to unofficial art in the USSR, namely to all the movements of fine arts that could not be presented to the general public due to the prohibitions of official censorship. This distinction between official and unofficial art was definitively anchored in the USSR in 1932, after the dispersal of all groups and at the time of the formation of a single Union of Artists subject to strict ideological control. All movements that did not meet the canons of socialist realism then found themselves in the underground: both the avant-garde and the more traditional movements that could have been more acceptable from an ideological and thematic point of view.
During this difficult period, making unofficial art was a form of protest. Art had become a method of combat - a form of social (or anti-social) gesture. The term "nonconformism" reflects this position well. Nonconformists expressed their protest against the organization of Soviet society. Their art was based on the rejection of society and politics. The "generation of janitors and caretakers" is nothing more than a metaphor, because it was not the janitors who became poets, but the poets who became janitors.
Their exhibitions were held in apartments where very few people were invited. During the Thaw and Stagnation, these artists managed to reach a wider audience, but this brought many difficulties for them. One of the most dramatic events in the cultural life of that time was the exhibition organized in Moscow in 1974 by a group of young artists. Their works, presented on a vacant lot, were swept away by bulldozers!

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- Festival de Cannes, Cannes (France), 1989