Plot synopsis

For Home Viewing (working title - Collection №2) is a sequel of my previous film Collection №1. Like the first film, it will be a personal and subjective work. The story will be told with the voice over and illustrated with film chronicles as well as some new footage, photographs, posters and hand drawn images. It will take us through the recent history of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia from the point of view of an insecure young man searching for himself in a strange and absurd reality that surrounds him.

Commentaries and bibliography

With the exception of the trees next door, which have grown considerably larger, not much has changed about the apartment where filmmaker Mikhail Zheleznikov grew up. After 37 years, Zheleznikov still looks out the same window from the same house. He still lives together with his mother, and has only exchanged his childhood room for the larger one that he now shares with his wife. Using a poetic collection of school pictures, news footage, and 8mm home movies, Zheleznikov takes stock of his childhood in the USSR and post-Soviet St. Petersburg. He remarks how as an overprotected preschooler, he was transformed from the egotistical "I" to the socialist "we." Slowly but surely, Zheleznikov discovered that the image of the world that was fed to him did not always add up, a realization that was aided by the arrival of an American exchange student named Samantha. The USSR collapsed in 1991, and completely in keeping with the times, Zheleznikov emerged as a businessman, cell phone and all. This was followed by a series of various jobs and periods of unemployment. While looking at pictures from a time when he was rather miserable, he remarks how nice it all looked, and he lets the old home movies convince him that maybe he was actually happy back then.
Source : www.idfa.nl/industry/Festival

Selected in the following festivals or events :

- Aye Aye Film Festival Nancy-Lorraine, Nancy (France), 2010

- Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival : IDFA, Amsterdam (Netherlands), 2009

Photos and videos