Eugenia Bakurin is a filmmaker and media artist, who was born in the Soviet Union and has lived in Germany for over 20-years.
T-Port’s Jess Sweetman caught up with the filmmaker to talk about her Lighthouse Selected found footage film “Long Time No Techno”, and to talk about why Odessa Film Studios are important, how she made her childhood memories into an anti war film, and what she’s up to next.
Eugenia’s film appears on T-Port courtesy of our partners at German Films / Next Generation Short Tiger.
T-Port (TP): Would you please introduce yourself and tell us three facts about your career as a filmmaker?
Eugenia Bakurin (EB): I’m Eugenia Bakurin. I’m a filmmaker and media artist. And my film is called “Long Time No Techno.” So three interesting facts I will say: The first one is I have never studied at the film school. I studied at art school. And so it’s the first first fact.
The second one, this film was actually my second found footage film. So I am not quite specialised, but I am a beginner and I want to do more found footage films.
And the third one is my background may be influencing my view and my, you know, my art. So I have a background from which I also studied politics as well. I was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in Kazakhstan. So this influenced my work.
TP: Was the found footage that you used in your film, something you would have seen as a child?
EB: Yes this is what I watched in my childhood, yes.
TP: What does making the 2023 Lighthouse Selections mean to you?
EB: I was really thrilled and excited because it’s a big step for me in my career. This is the first film which reached a lot of public as well. And I was very surprised in a good way.
This year I won the Short Tiger by German Films and it was a huge success for me and this one as well. So the T-Port selection is … wow, I still can’t believe it.
TP: Tell us about the themes in your film, because there seems to be a lot of joy:
I think maybe that’s an interesting part because it’s about war, but it’s also about joy as well.
But it’s about this time where there was no war and everybody was working together and nostalgic moments.
TP: What does the Lighthouse Selection mean for you as a filmmaker?
EB: I think it could be good for me. So it’s a significant milestone for me as a filmmaker, and it opens new opportunities of course, and I think, I hope I will meet a lot of people who can inspire me and help me as well on my way and my journey. So I’m excited to explore all these opportunities. I’m very grateful for this.
TP: What was the inspiration behind your film?
EB: I think it comes from my background because I grew up in Kazakhstan and I was born in the Soviet Union and I watched all these films in my childhood. But I’ve been living in Germany for 20 years. And I developed this Western European view on these old films, and I almost, forgot this footage.
And then one day I explored it again and I wanted to do something with this because it’s so weird and I wanted to share it with the people here because nobody knew about this footage here and these films. Nobody knows about them. And I wanted to show some images from there. And I started to work on this footage.
And as the war in Ukraine started, I already knew I had to use the footage from Ukraine because it represents this common past between Ukraine and Russia. And for me as well, it’s also my common past and my relation to Ukraine. I have never been to Ukraine before – so one time for a week – but I have no relation with this. But it hurts for me to see these images and what’s happening there. And I wanted to do something to express my feelings about Ukraine and about Odessa film studio.
The film studio is also very important for filmmakers as well, because in Odessa, Eisenstein, for example, worked in Odessa. So it’s for me like my personal background, but also my background as a filmmaker as well. So Odessa is a very important point on the map for the whole of humankind and film history as well.
And also, I was really inspired by the music. The music is written and performed by my good friend Momen Shaweesh. He has Palestinian roots, and this is how he works in his music. He uses this Levantine and Palestinian melodies and instruments and combines them with modern music.
So this idea, it’s really, really important and it’s really beautiful. So I made something which is so similar maybe, yeah, that’s my inspiration.
TP: Could you talk us through the process of making your film?
EB; At first I started to collect all these films from Odessa studio. It was easy because all of them are digitalized and they are fully available on YouTube so everybody can watch them. So they are free to watch and I recommend to watch one of them. If you understand Russian, some films are dubbed in English and one of these films is also dubbed in German.
It’s called der electronictronische doppelganger for German speakers.
And I collected them and then I started to to search for the moments which are magical or surreal. And then I tried to combine them. And I wanted also to combine the images so they fit to each other. Maybe at the beginning I had 12 or 13 films and just six films stayed in the end.
And I also wanted to add a narrative story. Maybe if you watch the film, you can see the small boy with a band who is playing piano. What is in his music is also in his mind. So all these pictures in the toy store or on the carousel, it’s in his mind. And this is in his music. This is my message more or less.
And the actual name of this band in the original film is Cinema, which is also funny.
TP: What do you wish you’d known in advance of making your film?
EB: At the beginning it was quite not so difficult for me to make this film, but I didn’t know anything about the film industry, you know: distribution and festival strategy. Because of my background, I’m from media arts and from art school.
So it was huge luck for me to be chosen by German Films and the Short Tiger. So I knew something and I am still discovering a lot of things. So it was the biggest challenge for me to learn how it works – sales agents and distributors and what does what and who is working, how and where my film fits and which festival should be first.
TP: What do you want people to take away from your film?
EB: I think this is a love for what people can do if they work together and they are not at war. And also, besides the value of human life as well, the value of cultural heritage. For me, it was important to open up this film from just showing the Ukraine, but also the music shows that there are a whole lot of places where there is war now, and we have to just protect all these people and all these cultures.
TP: What’s next?
EB: I’m actually working on different projects. So one found footage film, which I want to use older footage may be from Stalin’s time. So make it a little bit harsher. Not so not so nice like this one. And I also I’m also working on a project for children. It’s a kind of media installation, media project where you can be a participant. It’s a huge project which I’ve been working on for years now. But by myself, I also want to continue found footage and as well the third one is an essay film about national identities in Eastern Europe.
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