Event

ELEKTRO MOSKVA

Dir. Elena Tikhonova and Dominik Spritzendorfer, 2013
Austria, 89 min.
In Russian and English, with English subtitles.

We are bringing back one final screening of ELEKTRO MOSKVA with a live DJ/VJ set following the screening! When we screened this in February, Dominik Spritzendorfer was unable to attend/perform due to an unforeseen change of his schedule. It's all set this time so get your tickets now before they sell out!

Welcome to a weird and definitely wired world of avant garde rock musicians, DIY circuit benders, vodka-swilling dealers and urban archaeologists/collectors, all fascinated with obsolete Soviet-era electronic synthesizers: primitive and ungainly beasts like the Polyvox, ESKO, Yunost and the fabulous ANS Photo-Electronic Synthesizer, a surreal device that translates abstract drawings into sound. This strange universe of cosmic chill-out tunes, Space Age dance music and electronic chirps & tweets has been rescued by directors Elena Tikhonova and Dominik Spritzendorfer in this fascinating & cheeky documentary incorporating rare archival footage including the last 1993 interview with famed inventor Leon Theremin. In a bizarre twist, many of these instruments were a by-product of the KGB and Soviet military, created in the off-hours by scientist/inventors cobbling together spare transistors and wires -- including Theremins Rube Goldberg-esque Rhythmicon from 1932, the worlds first rhythm machine, described by a museum curator as space wreckage. A new generation of avant garde rock musicians has embraced the unpredictability and chaos of these instruments: as Benzo (aka Richardas Norvila) admiringly says, On a Western device, you push a button and get a result On a Soviet instrument, you push a button and get something. Rooting through discarded storage units for cracked and yellowing keyboards, pulling apart cheap toys and re-wiring their inanely cheerful voice boards, these guerilla circuit benders are creating new cosmic sounds from these forgotten instruments with expanded abilities.