Title of the Film: MUSIC, CANVAS, OIL…
Genre: Arthouse
Screenplay, direction, art direction, production design, author of the paintings, video and audio montage, performer of the figure of the painter: Sergey Popolsin
Composition and presentation: Evgeny Masloboev
Camera: Rosmarie Spitzer
The ‘girl with the little boat’ performed with the permission of her parents by the three-year-old Ylvie Brehmer
In the film are used parts from the family video-archives digitized from videocassettes (VHS)
Production: Heim-Filmstudio "P.S."
Year: 2018
Countries: Austria, Russia
Languages: English, French, German, Russian
Duration: 58:00 minutes
The overall concept of the film is easier to understand once one is familiar with the story of how it came into being.
In 2004 the totally blind painter Sergey Popolsin and the musician Evgeny Masloboev were working on a joint project provisionally entitled 'Color in Sound'. At the time Evgeny created more than two dozen musical compositions to paintings by Sergey. Although this painting-and-music project was never ultimately realized, the music was preserved.
In 2015 Sergey had the idea of filming these tone poems. Having secured Evgeny’s consent to using his compositions in his auteur movie, Sergey set to work together with his wife Rosmarie Spitzer. By September 2018 the film MUSIC, CANVAS, OIL… had been completed.
The compositional principle of the film is inseparably bound up with its music, right down to the level of the individual episodes. Taking the total number of the pieces of music into account, the whole film could also be divided into twenty discrete, self-contained short films, each with its own subject – that is, the painting it focuses on.
As the author and performer of the whole video project, Sergey states: “I should not be identified one-to-one with the figure of the artist in the film. Although we resemble each other physically, and although all the paintings are mine, I have merely attempted as a painter to answer in metaphorical terms, without words, the question put by visitors to the exhibition – ‘How are the paintings made?’ – and not to talk about myself.”
In terms of their content, all these short films form a linked chain: painting en plein air, memories, strolls in a city, visiting a jazz club and making an exhibition.
The film concludes with a metaphorical clip: a blind man stumbles across a stony sun-baked desert, without realizing that there is a wall in front of him. This metaphor is perhaps too literal, but the unspoken thought behind it speaks not of the burden of blindness, but of an artist who sees his own world and pays no heed to reality.
Paintings by Sergey Popolsin used in the film:
Waiting for Salvation Oil, Canvas, 54x46, 1992
Branches of an Apple-tree O.,C., 70x50, 1998
Snowdrop O.,C., 70x50, 2000
Forwards? O.,C., 58x44, 1990
The Space after clinical Death O.,C., 100x80, 1997
Autumn Still-Life O.,C., 65x50, 2001
Sleepless O.,C., 48x38, 1992
Town. Traffic Light O.,C., 100x80, 1998
Town. Outskirts O.,C., 100x80, 1998
Grand Piano O.,C., 100x80, 1998
Double-bass O.,C., 100x80, 1998
Triptych: Fragments of Jazz. Banjo - Percussion - Saxophone O.,C., 70x50, 1995 (3x)
The Time O.,C., 60x40, 1992
Self-portrait 1991 O.,C., 28x24, 1991
Dialogue with Flowers. Roses in Shades of light Red O.,C., 65x50, 2001
Love to Mum O.,C., 85x60, 2007
A little Smile O.,C., 80x100, 1998
Self-portrait 1994 O.,C., 50x40, 1994
Dialogue with Flowers. Cornflower O.,C., 65x50, 2002
Rain. June O.,C., 80x60, 2000
Diptych: Village Sketches O.,C., 70x55, 2003 (2x)
A hot Day O.,C., 85x60, 2007
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