Kvadrat (film)

DJ Andrey Pushkarev wakes up in his Moscow apartment, packs his vinyl records into a rolling bag and leaves for Domodedovo airport, to fly to Zurich. Upon arriving, he is greeted by the promoter of the Supermarket club. After falling asleep in the hotel, he is rudely awaken by the alarm, dresses up and leaves for the job in the middle of the night. After finishing his DJ set, he leaves the club to take the train to Geneva. While en route, instead of admiring the Alpine scenery, he sleeps.

After a short visit to a friend in Geneva (whether male or female is not shown), he takes the plane back to Moscow. He thus completes the first "story loop", repeated with slight variations throughout the entire film, a metaphor on techno music loops.

In his flat in Moscow, after quickly replying to booking requests on Skype, he goes through his huge collection of vinyl techno records to prepare his next performances. A quick shave and he leaves to take a taxi for the railway station, where he boards a train for Saint Petersburg.

Once in Saint Petersburg, he waits at a friend’s flat, while listening to tracks on Beatport. After nightfall, he is driven to Barakobamabar, where he plays a set. At dawn, his friends accompany him to the metro, one of them barely walking from too much drink. Pushkarev then takes the metro back to the train station, using a short-cut through Saint Petersburg down-town.

Back in Moscow, and back to the beginning of the story loop, he visits his friends and while drinking tea, debates his dream of playing techno during the day and bringing the techno club industry more in line with a healthy lifestyle.

After a short metro trip, he plays in a Moscow club Mir, after which he flies out to Geneva, again. There, he takes the same train as previously, looping in the other direction, to Olten via Bern. Greeted by the club promoter, he goes directly to the local club Terminus, where technical problems hamper his performance. The Technics SL-1210 turntable refuses to switch the playback speed from 45 rpm to 33 rpm. Later, a club technician bumps his elbow into the tonearm. Tired, Pushkarev takes a cab to the hotel, where he checks his in-coming booking requests on the notebook computer.

In the morning, he takes the train to Lausanne where he changes for a TGV to Paris. After a performance at the 4 Éléments bar, he continues his trip to the SWISS hub in Zurich, where he boards a flight to Budapest.

The local crew transport him from Budapest to Kecel, where he plays at the club Korona to a massive audience. Asleep in the car back to Budapest, he misses the decorated down-town and gets only a couple of hours to repack at the hotel, before leaving again for the airport, restarting the loop.

He flies back to the Zurich hub, where he changes for a flight to Bucharest.

Picked-up at the airport, he is driven to Craiova, where he plays at club Krypton without any rest.

The next day, he sleeps in the car during a huge snowstorm of 2012, one of the deadliest in Romania’s history, to arrive in Cluj-Napoca’s club Midi. He plays to an ecstatic crowd, only to wake up in the same battered BMW driving again through winter.

Finally, he arrives at the seaside, stares at the waves and the sunset and silently walks away, leaving his bag of vinyls on the beach.

Because of budget restrictions, Anatoly Ivanov acted as writer, co-producer, director, cinematographer, editor, and sound engineer.[5]

Besides the obvious facade of DJ work seen in a night club, Kvadrat explores the lesser-known themes[15] of DJ travel, fatigue, sleep deprivation, self-destruction, absurdity, loneliness,[16] purpose of art and stereotypes of the artist.[5]

Anatoly Ivanov combined the genres of a road movie and a music video, creating a modern-day techno musical without much dialogue.[17] He deliberately applied the aesthetics of fiction films to non-fiction footage and removed documentary clichés in order to achieve a third category, a result between fiction and documentary genres. In other words, a documentary using fiction techniques such as exhibition, metaphors and symbolism to express ideas, provoke emotions and ask questions implicitly, instead of exposition, staged interviews and explanatory voice-over to communicate the answers explicitly.[5]

The film was quietly[18] released in 720p quality on Vimeo on October 17, 2013, with English,[19] French[20] and Russian[21] subtitles, accumulating 53 000 plays (as of September 2014, not to be confused with loads). It premiered in cinema as 2K DCP during the Kommt Zusammen festival[22][23][24][25][26] in Rostock, Germany, on April 18, 2014.

The public and press were surprised by a stealthy release without any marketing campaign.[27]

The reviewers praised the aesthetic,[28] atmospheric, musical[29] and meditative qualities of the film, its realistic nature.[30] As well as the decision to forego traditional interviews[31] and adopt innovative editing.

• Speaking in Code — an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
• Berlin Calling — a German fiction film about DJ and composer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner) struggling with drug abuse
• Techno
• Dub techno

• Official website
• Kvadrat at IMDb
• Kvadrat at AllMovie