Ten minutes of silence

The documentary-experimental film "Ten Minutes of Silence" is a film expression of the trends embodied in the painting by Malevich's "Black Square" and John Cage's "4'33" in music. The viewer is offered an attempt to realize the reality by giving up hearing as the main channel of perception. The film is based on the history of the twentieth century, the age of world wars, catastrophes and tragedies. It is a silent scream, a silent explosion, a silent black and white abyss. "Ten minutes of silence" - a mirror of the twentieth century, a mirror of modern civilization, a mirror of our time. Turning off the sound is as easy as drawing a "Black Square", which inevitably occurs when the film is projected onto the screen. And just as the black color absorbing all colors, self-sufficient and inexorable, became a symbol of a new era in painting, so strange and terrible silence accompanying the film, is slightly ahead of the time, foreshadowing a fundamentally new round in the development of cinematography.

Author: 

Year: 

1995

Country: 

Russia
Technical data

Original format: 

35mm

Speed: 

24FPS

Aspect ratio: 

1.37:1

Colour: 

B&W

Sound: 

Silent

Length: 

10 minutes

References: 

"Ten minutes of silence" is revolutionary film at least. For a cinema of Russia, it is exact. Many spectators have now thought, that, being in a hall, they listen to 10 minutes of silence, actually, it had been a visual silence.   The similar one John Cage has made in 1960th, having written a composition "4:33": at full as-sembly of a hall in a conservatory, at ideal parade of all musicians who have gathered on a stage, - people within 4 minutes 33 seconds heard silence. And it was revolution in art of 20 century. The same but in cinema Frolov has made. In the film has just shown to us "Ten minutes of si-lence". We saw them, these 10 minutes of silence!   What is a no-silence for cinema? The same as a no-silence for a sound. More often we do not hear a melody, we do not hear that really is music. When we watch MTV, unless we hear music? No, we hear a dust mixed up with advertising which is too the dust, - that is the double, hashed russian salad of dust. When we go along the street, we hear noise of automobiles, shouts unsatis-fied with a life, citizens which in hurry to work. We hear a noise of factories where are people-ants, whom drum pore, that they here only work, and when the working day is finished, they can spend the same as the bourgeois, to receive the same pleasures. Actually, all this a deceit because they of it cannot really allow themselves... And all this - sounds which are a great deceit.   It and illusion of news which that a week ago, that today, do not vary. A certain sound noise, ac-cordingly dust because they are not news. When you listen to politicians, you listen to lie be-cause they do not speak you that will be tomorrow. They do not speak about the real intentions. It again sounds of lie.   And how many such lie around!    The cinema are a visual kind of an art where words and music play the subordinated role, and better they at all would not play it. The best films are dumb, because they enable a cinema to ex-ist in not greese, it is accomplished the cleared kind. Frolov also has shown to us: pure visual silence. In fact around not only sound it is enough dust, but also it is visually full. Whether it is a lot of persons, looking on which, we take pleasure? Yes the majority of them are disgusting, be-cause it is false people. The anxiety, psychopathy of human faces is that from them pushes away us. Actually we do not want to see the majority of these persons. Physiognomies of cities are ugly. How many all ugly, and all this - the sounding image of falseness and destruction.   That we accepted Frolov is a silence of evil visual, silence of falseness visual, and - silence of rage and nervousness surrounding us visual bedlam. In this case the author rejects falseness im-pregnating everything, that is at cinema, at theatre, on TV. Which do not reflect the surrounding validity, and diligently simulate a certain nonexistent reality."  Vladimir Salnikov 

Distribution/sales: 

7-th Experimental Cinema Week, Madrid, Spain, November, 1997;14-th Stuttgart International Filmwinter, Germany, January, 2001;10-th International "Festival of Festivals", St.Petersburg, Russia, June, 2002;7-th International Independent Film Festival, St.Petersburg, Russia, November, 2004;2-nd International Festival of Tendentious Art "Artconcept", St-Petersburg, Russia, May 2005;8-th Festival of Parallel Cinema "Cinephantom", Moscow, Russia, November 2005;The action of "Michael Shemjakin's Fund" "Transformation of a square", St-Petersburg, Russia, November, 25 2005;II International art-project "A SALT of WATER", Kaliningrad, Russia, March 2006;VI International Performance and Experimental Art Festival, Manege, St.Petersburg, Russia, August 2006.

Event "Fund Mikhail Shemyakin" "Transformation square"

CLUB CINEFANTOM 

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