4:3 Online Film Festival Review: 3OHA

Half documentary, half mood piece, Zona explores the evolution of the Russian cultural spheres from the tumultuous yet exciting ‘90s to the depressing contemporary reality of economic stagnation and cultural repression. As a piece of art, it is aesthetically alluring in the same desolate vein as a cluster of grey, Krushchev-era apartment blocks in the Russian winter. The camera renders the muted beauty of wheat fields and decaying Soviet architecture that is Russia’s unique, gritty charm. A foreboding, synth-heavy score layers on the dread and recalls the mood of influential Soviet films such as Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).

The first half of the film, which runs for a brisk 63 minutes, features stock footage from the ‘80s and ‘90s and talking head interviews with some of the leading cultural figures of the immediate post-Soviet years, including Artemy Troitsky and Igor Shulinsky – early importers of rave culture to Russia. Historical footage of the political upheaval of the early 90s is interspersed with shots of wild raves and Russian youths embracing their first taste of Western culture. The film is quick to point out that the 90s were a very turbulent and dangerous time for people in former Soviet countries and standards of living plunged below even those of the Gorbachev era. But the memories of the post-Soviet decade also tell of a time of exuberant optimism and opportunity. According to Troitsky, “it looked like the people best equipped for the new times [were] us, the young people, who knew capitalist culture, who were dynamic and ready for cultural change.”

Like any examination of contemporary Russian culture, a singular foreboding figure looms at the edges of the narrative, exerting his minatory influence over every scene even in absentia. Although Uncle Vlad only appears in one scene of the movie, the effect of his modern gulag can be seen in the bleak existence of young people today. The ‘Zona’ of the film’s title has a dual connotation in Russian, meaning gulag or ‘living prison’, which Vomero invokes to signify the repressed nature of the post-Soviet cultural space. In his words, “an ill-defined zone was engineered to create a violent mix of capitalism and feudalism. One that blurred the borders around what would become a new Russia.”

One character we follow through the streets of Moscow peddles counterfeit shoes to clients intent on attaining the simulacrum of success portrayed by Western media. Others pose for Instagram photoshoots in overgrown urban wastelands and talk fruitlessly about an impossible trip to Los Angeles. Today’s Russian youth have just as much of a fascination for Western culture and prosperity as their Soviet forebears and, depressingly, are just as untethered from the possibility of attaining it.

The 4:3 Online Film Festival is screening online until May 18. Films are available for viewing live and for another 24 hours after their premiere.