Returned from the Russian countryside after almost three weeks. Not exactly a place of Chekhovian atmospheres and moods. Such things are hard to find nowadays in the Russian countryside but with wild fires billowing in the hot summer wind and temperatures of up to 40 degrees, those lazy dreaming Russian summers seem like a thing of the long distant past. Which is something Chekhov was already hinting at in The Cherry Orchard. We left Moscow as the heat started to become unbearable and headed out to a an old soviet style holiday rest complex. It was built as a Pioneer camp for soviet school children but has been converted into a kind of holiday complex for adults. There we escaped the worst of the smog and smoke from the fires. I took the main computer with me and was able to get a considerable amount of work done especially on the Stanislavsky Film “Stanislavsky and the Metamorphosis of Russian Theatre”. The script is more or less fleshed out and ready for recording. I have a good narrator in mind, James Langton, an English actor who lives in New York. He has just completed the narration for the other film I have in post production “The Japanese Garden – Art, Landscape and Meaning”. The title may appear elsewhere under a different variation until I can settle on a version that I am happy with. James delivered the final text with the corrections I had requested and I can now start to complete the film. Excellent narrator of text and I am very happy with the result. I will work on “Stanislavsky and Metamorphosis” parallel with the Japanese film. Now back in Moscow and coping with the unendurable heat.
Year: 2010
The Wilde spirit that speaks the language of modern theatre – The Irish Times – Sat, Oct 02, 2010
Copernicus Films new projects
Coming Soon!
Moscow Streets – Prelude to a film series.
In order to understand what its like to film in Moscow or just be in Moscow, on the streets, squares and boulevards, one needs to get a feel of the atmosphere in Moscow in those early days of 1995. Its very different now, garishly neon lit cityscape’s which have displaced the dark dusty streets and yards which existed at that time. It was said that up to perestroika you could walk from one end of Moscow to another without having to cross a road. You simply moved form one courtyard to another. I would walk around Moscow for days on end sometimes as I had little else to do in that early time when I hardly knew anybody. The winter dust of early March blew around my cheeks and filled my nose with a fine stinging compound, thick in its icy consistency. The snow had all melted away but the cold air contained the eroded particles from a city that was busily fending off decay as best it could and as it still does, although now the resources are more adequate for building glass and stone monsters which are rising sheer into the Moscow skies. I walked back from a trip to the supermarket “Three Fat Men” with a miserable depressive gait, absorbing the sight of yellow and cracked masonry and dull chipped black railings of the low buildings which had been unable to endure the winter and seemed to sag under layer upon layer of winter silt left behind by the melted snow. The grey and heavy weather added to the muted atmosphere. No clouds overhead, simply a misty canopy, more like rising steam than clouds. But in all this was Moscow’s heavy beauty which could bear down on ones consciousness like a cruel mistress. However this benumbing beauty was only one facet of the whole edifice, and I can show you other facets. For the time being it was all I could see and feel and it left me with an aching wonder at the enormity of the grinding vision which was opening up before me seeming to surround me with a phantasmagorical landscape of sweet deterioration which I loved all the more for its air of decay and bleakness. This was not the dream of most of Moscow’s residents. They aspired to other visions of Moscow, lighter and gentler but at that time, wrapped in its post perestroika mantel, it was the reality for most of the inhabitants of Moscow and for me.
Interview with Michael Craig guest speaker on Voice of Russia discussing the 32nd Moscow Film Festival
The Moscow Garage and Meyerhold Film -Reprise
Excellent news about the film “Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde”. The film has been selected as part of the “100 years of performance” in Moscow along with films by Yoko Ono and other film makers, which is being held at the Garage in Moscow. The exhibition is a 100 year history of theatre using film and video installations.The Garage is a new venue for modern art in Moscow. It is a converted bus garage which was designed by the grat Russian avant-garde architect and artist Konstantin Melnikov. The exhibition will run from June until September 2010. We filmed there some years ago for the film Architecture and the Russian Avant-garde. At that time it was still a working garage so it was interesting to see how they have converted the building for use as an art gallery. The model it seems to me is the Tate Modern in London but on a smaller scale. There are two other main exhibitions; Mark Rothko which has an excellent range of Rothko’s work and also The Feast of Trimalchio by AES+F also a film/video 
installation on a grand scale. The exhibition was first featured in New York last year where “Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde” was shown. Gratifying to see it in my (now) home town of Moscow where I can get to see it myself. have a look at the excert below.
Stanslavsky Documentary Film – Copernicus Films – Update
Just back from the UK after accomplishing several important steps in the progress of this new documentary film about Stanislavsky of his life and work. The one major accomplishment was securing the interview with Jean Benedetti, one of the foremost international authorities on Stanislavsky, which will be included as part of the film. After a period of negotiation the interview took place with Jean Benedetti at the beginning of May 2010. Instrumental to this process was the help of Paul Fryer of the Rose Bruford College of acting and Andrew Eglinton also from Rose Bruford College and who runs The London Theatre Blog. Paul Fryer is also curator of The Stanislavsky Centre which houses one of the largest Stanislavsky archives outside of Russia and is a major resource for research into Stanislavsky. Andrew made sure that the logistics side of things were in place as well as playing a main role in the recording sessions which took place at Rose Bruford College and advice about archive material. On returning to Moscow the production will continue with more filming and locations in Moscow as well as negotiations for archive footage. Post production and editing for the film is planned for the middle of June and will continue throughout the summer.
Stanislavsky Film
On Monday in Moscow Copernicus Films managed to complete an important interview for the up and coming documentary film about Stanislavsky‘s life and work in theatre. Anatoly Smeliansky, the rector of the Moscow Arts Theatre School, kindly agreed to be interviewed and give his thoughts for a documentary film about the Russian theatre director Stansilavsky which will be released later in 2010. The film is in the final stages of pre production. Next week we will travel to the UK in order to record the voice over and a further interview with an eminent figure and writer on Stansilavsky in the English language. The film is being made with the cooperation of the Rose Bruford college of acting and the Stanislavsky Centre which is one of the largest archives of Stansilavsky outside of Russia. The Stansilavsky centre has made the archive available to Copernicus Films for use in the film.
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News about Copernicus Films work in progress
Its a long time since I have written anything here and I feel like I am letting people down and myself down so here is an update of what has been happening lately and what is likely to happen soon. Basically I have been continuing work on the two Japanese films in some earnest and have got them to a point where I will be able to go to the UK to record the voice overs. This will tie in with another project which I have been working on about Russian theatre. Its a completely new project which is taking up a great deal of time but I think it is worth it because it involves the collaboration of a well known acting college in London (More later). That will be coming up in April but at the moment I am still down to writing the script and researching the material. Arranging interviews is on the cards in the next few weeks or so. The film will require probably three interviews. I will also have to get some more archive material from the archive in Krasnogorsk which is a little way outside Moscow. It requires some tricky negotiation with the administration there but that’s another story. In addition to all of that there is continuous editing going on with the two Japanese films.(I hope to have titles sometime soon so I can stop calling them “the two Japanese films”. Talking about Japan, just to mention there was a superb conference this week for three days about Japanese culture and art here in Moscow. Eighteen speakers on a variety of subjects from mandalas, to contemporary Japanese art. Confirmed many of my researches and it added to my pool of knowledge about Japan.
http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/2249225/10595720/
On June 24th Michael Craig was interviewed,discussing the 32nd Moscow Film Festival on Radio Voice of Russia with Estelle Winters, as well as his own film, “Meyerhold Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde” which is being shown as part of the exhibition “100 Years of Performance” at the Garage gallery in Moscow.